Hemingway's Chair

by Michael Palin

  Martin smiled quickly at a tiny headscarved lady staring in at him. ‘Sorry, Miss Loyle.’ Hettie Loyle was one of a pair of identical twins, both still alive in their eighties. They were like a double act. Their humour was sharp and rather dangerous and they had few real friends in the town.

  ‘Looking at the ladies again, Martin?’ she said.

  He gave a dismissive grunt of laughter, but coloured all the same.

  ‘You know what we used to say when I was young?’

  Martin shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t know, Hettie.’

  She flashed a row of perfect teeth. ‘Your eyes were popping out like bulldogs’ bollocks!’

  Martin shook his head. Hettie Loyle laughed happily.

  Martin had stamped the counterfoil, handed back the book and was counting out the money when John Parr slid a large brown envelope along the counter.

  ‘Sling it in the bag could you, Mart. Cheryl came over romantic last night and I can’t move my back any more.’

  ‘American?’ Martin nodded in the direction of the departing customer.

  ‘Yeah, looked like a witch.’

  Martin winced. He reached for the packet, and was about to send it swiftly into the grey prison-made polypropylene sack behind him when he caught sight of a printed heading on the address label. In incongruous Gothic script it read, ‘The Hemingway Society of New Jersey’.

  He turned it over and there, in bold capitals and purple ink, was the name and address of the sender. ‘Ruth Kohler, Everend Farm.’

  A voice came from behind him. ‘Problem, Martin?’

  Martin looked up. Nick Marshall was standing there. Martin couldn’t be sure how long he’d been there. He had something in his hand that looked suspiciously like a mobile phone.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Problem with the packet? You seemed to be spending a long time with it.’

  Martin lobbed the parcel quickly into the sack.

  ‘No, it was … American, you know. Don’t get many Americans in here.’

  ‘So you thought you’d better check the spelling.’

  Marshall smiled and Martin thought it best to laugh.

  ‘Your queue awaits,’ Marshall said and patted him professionally on the shoulder.

  * * *

  The next evening Martin was still working at half past six. Tuesday was balance day when post offices across the country checked their stock and their tills at close of business. There was only one personal computer at Theston and Martin and Elaine were the only two qualified to work it. Martin was on his own tonight, apart from Marshall who hovered, checking figures, examining returns and asking a lot of questions. At the end, when the last figures had been fed through, and everything tallied, Martin felt relieved. It hadn’t been easy having his new boss there and he’d been all fingers and thumbs on the keyboard. Now suddenly he felt the younger man’s hand rest lightly on his shoulder. There was a hint of something like lemon on his skin.

  ‘Martin…?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Marshall.’

  ‘Oh, Nick, please. How’s Thursday evening looking for you?’

  ‘Thursday?’ Thursday had come to mean only one thing. Elaine at the Pheasant after work.

  ‘Thursday?’ Martin repeated lamely.

  ‘For a little chat.’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘I’ll pick you up after work. We’ll go somewhere for a beer or two. D’you know the Pheasant Inn? I’m told it’s the nearest thing round here to a decent country pub. We can sit outside. Enjoy the Indian summer.’

  * * *

  ‘Well, why did you have to say yes?’ asked Elaine.

  ‘It was his suggestion.’

  The next day, Wednesday, Elaine had persuaded Martin to take a walk with her in the lunch hour. There was a quick, licking wind as they crossed the square. The heavy grey storm clouds had passed over and the sunbeams fell from behind them like bands of rain.

  ‘You could have said you were doing something on Thursday,’ she said reprovingly.

  ‘He doesn’t give you time to explain.’

  They turned and walked in the direction of the church.

  ‘And why can’t he talk to you at work, like he does the rest of us?’

  This was news to Martin. ‘Has he talked to you, then?’

  ‘Yes. And he’s nothing to say. Afternoon, Miss Loyle.’

  Viv Loyle was, marginally, the more eccentric of the Loyle twins. She was a regular churchgoer, but didn’t mind which church she went to. One week she would turn up among the Methodists, the next the Catholics. She had even been known to go by Super-Saver to the mosque at Bedford, to make her simple point that God was not petty-minded.

  ‘And how is the most handsome couple in Theston?’ she enquired, playfully.

  ‘Just good friends, Miss Loyle.’ It was Elaine’s regular riposte and was more than usually curt today. Viv Loyle gave a shriek of laughter, wagged a finger and stepped off the pavement into the path of a delivery lorry. There was a screech of brakes, nothing new in Theston. Lettuces scattered across the road.

  ‘When did he talk to you then ?’ Martin asked Elaine.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon some time.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘I was going to tell you tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘When we went to the Pheasant.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry.’

  Elaine seemed about to say something, but she stopped and shook her head. A largish middle-aged woman, her Puffa jacket inflated to Michelin size by the wind, blew along the pavement towards them.

  ‘Hello, Elaine! Hello, Martin!’ she trilled.

  ‘Hello, May,’ called Elaine. ‘How’s Mr Pimlott?’

  ‘No better. He has to be turned twice a night.’

  ‘Oh, poor man.’

  ‘Poor man! We’ll be in the grave before him. Bye!’

  The wind blew harder by the church and Elaine held the hair out of her eyes as she stopped and turned.

  ‘Martin?’ she said. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Martin dug his hands deep in his anorak pockets.

  ‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

  He kicked out. A small stone shot across the road.

  ‘There’s so much going on at the moment, Elaine.’

  ‘Not between you and me there isn’t.’

  ‘Look…’

  She interrupted him. ‘There’s no future at that post office, Martin. Marshall’s only interested in himself. He doesn’t care for people like us. We’re dispensable. He just wants to get the most out of us and if he doesn’t get what he wants he’ll find someone else. Mark my words.’

  They were out of the wind now but her eyes were still watering. She turned away from him and, reaching in her bag, drew out a purple tissue and blew her nose into it. She took a deep breath and turned to face him.

  ‘Just remember what I said to you the other day, Martin. In the car.’

  Six

  It was Thursday. Martin had felt uncomfortable all day. Even physically uncomfortable. He couldn’t face his sandwiches, which was quite unlike him. Women were beyond him. He’d combed the Master’s works to try and find some clue to Elaine’s behaviour. But none of Hemingway’s women fitted Elaine.

  He had to admit that Papa could be strange and brusque and bullying with women (as he could be with men). He liked them either mysterious and witty or loyal and submissive, and Elaine would have failed on both counts.

  * * *

  ‘Ready?’

  It was a quarter to six. The day’s work was done and Nick Marshall was holding open the back door of the post office whilst Martin fiddled around with his briefcase.

  ‘You won’t need that,’ Nick assured him.

  ‘Can you drop me back here? For the bike?’

  ‘Of course, I’ve got to get back for a meeting anyway.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Marshall grinned quickly and pulled back his shoulders. ‘Trying to drum up more business.’

  As he settled nervousl
y into the figure-hugging front seat of Marshall’s Toyota Carina, Martin had to admit to a certain buzz of excitement. On a Manager’s salary, which he knew well enough to be sixteen thousand one hundred and fifty pounds a year, the man seemed to live like a king. There was even a car telephone. In addition to his mobile. A bottle of champagne was adrift on the back seat.

  Martin slowly relaxed and watched the seaside boarding houses give way to the new estates and then to the farms and then to the close, dark woods. He was struck by a new and quite unfamiliar sensation. He felt important.

  * * *

  ‘Where d’you like to sit?’

  ‘Anywhere’ll do,’ said Martin. It was too cold to sit outside.

  Marshall, two pints in hand, led him to a corner table in what was the old snug bar, which Ron Oakes had now carpeted, curtained, hung with stuffed birds and renamed the Hatchery. Martin had often shared this same table with Elaine.

  ‘You and Elaine are an item, then?’

  Martin frowned for a moment, then blushed in surprise. ‘Oh … well, yes we … er…’

  Nick Marshall tugged his neck muscles tight. ‘I clocked you at lunchtime. Yesterday, taking a walk. You’re well in there, Martin. I could think of worse people to sit next to all day. Cheers!’

  He smiled appreciatively and raised his glass. Martin did too, wondering, as he did so, where Marshall had seen them from and, more to the point, what he had seen.

  Nick Marshall set down his glass and looked squarely at Martin. ‘Are you happy with the way things are?’

  Martin shifted uncomfortably. He made a noise which he hoped would suggest he was thinking hard.

  ‘At the post office.’ Marshall went on.

  ‘At the post office?’

  ‘Where you work,’ Marshall added helpfully. ‘Are there any things you’d like to change?’

  Martin experienced intimations of panic. He couldn’t at that moment think of how to reply to the question. Or indeed why he’d been asked it in the first place. He recovered a little and opted for caution. ‘Well, I think possibly we’re a little traditional.’

  Marshall looked pleased. He pulled his chair closer, leaning forward expectantly, one arm upright on the table, elbow bent at a right angle. With his head thrust forward, Martin thought he resembled one of the gargoyles on Theston church. ‘Martin,’ he asked, ‘why did you join the Post Office?’

  The truth was that Martin had joined because he felt he owed it to his mother to stay in the area after his father died. And there had been no other jobs. ‘Because it had a future,’ he said, hoping it would sound convincing.

  To his relief Marshall nodded enthusiastically. ‘Exactly! You joined because you could see the potential. You didn’t join to sit selling stamps in the back of someone else’s shop.’

  Martin was happy to hear this. ‘It’s happening a lot round here. Franchising,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s going to be different at Theston. This is where the Post Office is going to show what it can do.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, Mr Marshall,’ said Martin.

  ‘Nick,’ replied Nick Marshall, expansively.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, Nick,’ repeated Martin.

  ‘I mean, what are we talking about here?’ enthused Nick Marshall. ‘The Post Office is part of national life. Part of our national identity. It’s our legacy and I’m damned if I’ll sit back and see it kicked around like the railways, the coalmines and shipbuilding.’

  Martin had rarely, if ever, felt excited about his work. It wasn’t one of those emotions you associated with working at a post office. But now he could actually feel his heart beating a tiny touch faster. Like everyone at the Theston office, and as far as he could tell everyone else in the union too, he had sat there like a rabbit in car headlights as the split-up of the Post Office had gone on. The telephone service hived off. Royal Mail split from Parcels, then Royal Mail and Parcels split from Counter Services, and they’d all meekly accepted it. Franchises and rural closures had followed and they’d meekly accepted them too. They’d lived off everyone else’s bad news, shutting their eyes to the fact that it could one day be theirs as well. Martin took a long mouthful of beer and set down his glass. ‘A man can be destroyed but never defeated,’ he declared.

  Nick Marshall looked mystified.

  ‘Ernest Hemingway,’ explained Martin. ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’

  Marshall’s eyes narrowed, then lit up. ‘Ah! Humphrey Bogart?’

  Martin shook his head. ‘Spencer Tracy.’

  ‘That’s the one. It was on television. About a month ago. That line wasn’t in it.’

  Martin bought himself another pint. Marshall refused on the grounds that he was driving, but Martin concluded that he didn’t much like beer, and he’d taken the trouble to come all the way out to Braddenham to put Martin at his ease.

  They drove back along the narrow lanes. At one point a pheasant clattered, panic-stricken and screeching, from the hedgerow ahead of them. Marshall put his foot down but the bird flapped out of danger and away over into the field.

  ‘Damn!’ said Marshall. ‘Missed a good supper.’

  It was almost half past seven when they pulled up in North Square. Nick Marshall switched off his headlights, but kept the engine running.

  He turned to Martin who sat awkwardly in the front seat, his anorak trapped in the door. Nick flexed his slim, powerful shoulders. ‘I’ve enjoyed our talk. There’s a lot of similarities between us, you know. We’re keen, we’re young still. We want to get things done.’

  Martin plucked helplessly at the hem of his coat.

  Marshall nodded across at the brick and stone bulk of the post office, turned back and confronted Martin. ‘Let’s face it. We both bloody know that should be the centre of the town. That’s why they put it there in the first place. We’ve got to make sure it stays that way, eh?’ As Marshall spoke, a minor series of convulsions seemed to affect the right-hand corner of his mouth as if there were some fundamental tension between his thoughts and his words.

  ‘I’ll go along with that. Oh yes,’ Martin replied, not liking to stare.

  Marshall put his hand out. He appeared to have the mouth problem under control. Martin shook his hand, awkwardly.

  ‘Good man. I can’t do much without your help.’

  Martin felt his self-confidence growing. ‘Count on it,’ he said. The perfect parting line, he thought, except that when he went for the door handle he stuck his fingers in an ashtray.

  ‘It’s the one underneath.’

  ‘Oh! Right. Thank you. And thanks for the drink.’ Martin squeezed the door handle.

  ‘No, pull it down.’

  ‘Ah!’ Martin laughed desperately. He tugged at the door.

  ‘You’ve got your elbow on the window lock. Now try.’

  Martin was hot, but the air was cool when he eventually got out of the car. When Marshall had driven off he stood and looked across at the building in which he’d spent half his life. Marsh Cottage, windswept and isolated, was a place he would always associate with his father’s illness and death. North Square was home.

  Seven

  Ruth Kohler curled her feet around the leg of the old kitchen table, its surface lightly corrugated by decades of washing and scrubbing, and read what she had written.

  Dear Beth and Suzy,

  The countryside here is very beautiful, though large swathes of it lie in my log basket (my English is coming on, don’t you think?) waiting to keep me alive. It’s only October but I have already consumed two small woods. You might have thought central heating, like family planning, was pretty much a universal item in the First World, but I assure you it has not reached Everend Farm Cottage. Indeed the twentieth century as a whole has not made much impact on Everend Farm Cottage. Electricity is coaxed nervously in through a hole in the wall, a ‘Calor-gas’ boiler explodes with atomic force, brighter than a thousand suns one minute, a black hole the next. There is a telephone up at the farm, and I guess the
nearest fax machine is in Paris. How romantic, I hear you say, and you’re probably right. Hemingway would doubtless have written his best work here, and the bird life is wonderful. Duck, partridge, pheasant. Everything he liked to kill.

  I have spent most of the last three weeks on a title. The Hemingway Project is a good name for a grant application, but a bummer for a book. I finally came up with one I like. Admiring Ernest. It’s from Dashiell Hammett’s line about him, you know the one – ‘Ernest has never been able to write a woman. He only puts them in books to admire him.’

  It may sound a tad playful for a university press so I’ll have to attach some suitably dry subtitle: Admiring Ernest: Contradictions, Correlations and Gender Roles in the Life and Work of E. H., that sort of thing.

  What do you think? I like it. It has fashionable irony and hopefully will lull those macho reviewers into a false sense of security. Reviewers? Who am I kidding?!

  I bought a car! Nothing exotic. It’s called a Cherry (no wonder they don’t sell them in Trenton!) despite being bright yellow. It’s perky and has a funny little thing called a gear-stick! The countryside is very gentle and not at all impressive until you get to the sea which, I’m told, is eating up the land at the rate of a foot a year. Nice to know that, by the time I leave, England will be a foot shorter! There are villages hidden away all over the place, and the nearest town is Theston. Untidy but everyone very friendly. The church is beautiful and ancient and has a rood-screen that’s older than Atlantis and I’m quite seriously thinking of believing in God again. Well, at least for a year.

  What more can I tell you ? My little laptop sits in the alcove (south-facing) winking at me greenly. There are cats up at the farm, and one fat marmalade fellow has been eyeing me up with a view to making friends. I am trying to encourage things to grow inside the house as fast as they grow outside but my green fingers have turned blue in the cold and I may have to lure in a hawthorn hedge or the corner of a sugar-beet field. As to human contact, well, not a lot yet. Mr Wellbeing (sic!) the farmer is pure Thomas Hardy and barely comprehensible. His wife a bit of a dragon. I shall have to make an effort to MIX, won’t I?

  Missing you, and everyone.