Hemingway’s Chair

Sproale was in the garden and watched her draw up. She told Ruth that
Martin was out on his bicycle somewhere and wouldn’t be back for some time.
Then she straightened up and tapped her trowel on a stone to free the earth
from it.
    ‘I’ve
just about done now,’ she said, with a quick smile. ‘I’ve no more energy.’
    Her
smile was a little brave, it seemed to Ruth. ‘You prefer coffee, don’t you,’
said Kathleen, pulling off her gardening gloves and moving towards the house.
    They
sat in the kitchen and looked out across the marsh grass and the sedge and the
trailing willow trees that swung mournfully in the soft balmy breeze.
    ‘It’s
the best time of year, I always think,’ said Mrs Sproale. ‘Spring.’
    ‘I
don’t know how you live here in the winter,’ said Ruth, it’s bad enough at
Everend Farm, but at least there’s some shelter.’
    ‘I
sometimes wonder myself,’ said Kathleen. ‘But Martin’s father always liked it.
Didn’t like the town. Said he saw enough of it on his rounds.’
    ‘What
did he do? Your husband.’
    ‘He
delivered letters. Postman.’
    ‘Martin
never talks about him.’
    ‘No.
Well, he died when Martin was seventeen.’
    ‘Was
he ill?’
    Kathleen
nodded. ‘He’d been ill a while.’
    Outside
the window a swarm of black and yellow siskins had discovered the bacon rind on
the bird table and were mounting a series of darting attacks.
    ‘That
must have been a real shock for Martin.’ Kathleen’s soft watery eyes turned
sharply on Ruth, then quickly away. ‘Well, I should think that’s why he doesn’t
talk about it.’
    ‘Maybe
he should go and see somebody. Get some advice.’
    Once
again Kathleen’s eyes met hers. She spoke scornfully. ‘A psychiatrist?’
    ‘Well,
some kind of therapy. Why not? I was in analysis for a while. It helped.’
    Kathleen’s
gaze turned to the bleak flatness outside. She spoke softly, but almost to
herself. ‘Didn’t help his father. He was sent from one psychiatrist to another
like one of his own parcels.’ She stared hard out of the window. ‘Didn’t hear a
bloody word from any of them after he’d gone. Excuse my language, Ruth. None of
them had a word to say for themselves.’
    All
at once Ruth felt cold. ‘How did he die, Mrs Sproale?’
    Kathleen
stayed staring out of the window. She was breathing hard and her mouth was
working as if trying to form some difficult word. ‘I don’t tell people that,’
she said eventually, it might help if you did.’
    The
kitchen clock struck the half-hour. Mrs Sproale turned to Ruth briskly, almost
pugnaciously. She brushed the flat of her hand across the table top as if to
remove imaginary crumbs. ‘That was seventeen years ago. I’m more worried about
his son now.’
    She
stood up abruptly, speaking rapidly as she deposited the imaginary crumbs at
the sink.
    ‘All
that Hemingway nonsense. I used to think it was just harmless but now I think
it’s poisoning him. I sometimes want to burn that room of his. All those bits
and pieces of someone else’s life. I hear him up there every night now, talking
and shouting. I’ve heard him swearing sometimes, and there’s no one else there.
Just him.’
    ‘He’s
been through a hard year.’
    ‘But
whose fault is that?’ To divert her anger Kathleen seized a bundle of cutlery
that was draining on the rack. ‘He could have been engaged to Elaine Rudge, he
threw that away.’ She began to sort the cutlery vigorously. ‘He could have been
Manager of that post office one day, he threw that away. He was everybody’s
friend, everyone in Theston knew him. Now he either stays upstairs or he’s out
for hours on his bicycle and never tells me where.’
    She
heaved a sigh and stood for a moment, leaning her arms on the draining board.
    Ruth
turned and looked out over the reclaimed marshland that ran flat to the sand
dunes and the sea. A poet could probably deal with that, she thought, but as an
academic she found it an untidy and arbitrary landscape. Aloof and unfriendly.
It reminded her, ominously, of the symbolism in A Farewell to Arms. How
Hemingway contrived the book so that all the scenes of death and disaster had
happened on the low, flat, land, and all the scenes of love, life and hope were
set in the clear air of the mountains. There were no mountains round here.
    There
was a noise at the side of the house and Martin appeared at the door. Ruth was
shaken by the sight of him. He wore the white tennis hat she