Hemingway's Chair

by Michael Palin

  ‘Well, I think it’s quite frightful. If this is the face of the future, the sooner we get North Square back the better. Four first class stamps for Tasmania please, Martin.’ She turned to her companion. ‘I shall have to have a word with Marshall. Do you know Marshall?’

  ‘I don’t think I do, no.’

  ‘He’s in charge of all the post office rebuilding. Awfully clever chap. Far too capable for this sort of job. Now those are air mail, aren’t they Martin?’

  ‘Forty-five pence, yes.’

  ‘I don’t want them traipsing round the Cape of Good Hope.’

  ‘All foreign mail goes by air now.’

  ‘Because it’s most frightfully important that these letters get there as soon possible.’ She turned to her companion. ‘Jonty’s developed frightful piles and my man in Harley Street says not to let anyone in Tasmania touch them. He’s got to go to a chap in Melbourne.’

  ‘Jonty out in Tasmania now?’ her friend enquired.

  ‘He’s doing some frightfully hush-hush work on a new reservoir. Locals are up in arms and I think Jonty’s time in the Falklands will stand him in good stead! Mouse loves it of course, but then she’s always been an outdoor girl. Thank you, Martin. And I do hope you don’t have to stay in this frightful place for long.’

  Like a large steamship with a dinghy in tow the pair of them disappeared out through the sweetshop. For a moment the post office was empty.

  ‘Position Number Four,’ shrilled the Swedish soprano. Mary Perrick looked across sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I pressed it by mistake.’

  * * *

  Martin had rarely been so happy to see his lunch hour. Not that it was announced any longer by the old wall clock, but that was a minor quibble. Thirteen hundred on the dot-matrix indicator or one o’clock on his watch, it marked a respite from the nightmare. He sat for a moment in the narrow, airless back room which had been provided for staff breaks. There were two spindly metal and plastic chairs on either side of the door and a shelf beside a wash-basin on which was a kettle, a box of tea bags, a jar of coffee and a stack of polystyrene cups. On one of the chairs Shirley Barker sat peeling a piece of cling film from around her lunch. Martin took his sandwiches from his anorak pocket and looked at them without interest. He had no appetite.

  Shirley looked up at him, myopically. ‘Not having your lunch, Martin?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’ve heard that about people who work in sweetshops,’ she said confidingly. ‘They lose their appetite.’

  Martin looked at Shirley. ‘Isn’t this awful?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our new post office.’

  ‘I think it’s lovely.’

  Martin made for the door. He dropped his ham and cheese sandwiches, unopened, next to the chair on which she sat eating. ‘Have mine as well.’

  ‘No, thank you, I’m a vegetarian. I don’t condone the raising of animals for slaughter.’

  ‘Then just eat the cheese,’ he said, and slammed the door.

  Twenty-three

  Martin walked furiously out through the yard at the back of the shop as if he knew where he was going. He didn’t. He stopped, then turned and made his way along an alley which led eventually to the High Street near the Market Hotel. He crossed the road and into North Square. The old post office was a sorry sight. The builder had moved quickly to board up the windows and the oak doors were scuffed and scratched and firmly shut. There was a noise of sawing and hammering from inside and this led Martin cautiously down Echo Passage. At the entrance to the site there was a gate which was open. Martin went in. A truck was drawn up close to the back entrance and workmen inside were tossing things through the window. As Martin drew closer he realised with a shock that he recognised much of what was being flung away. The long public writing desk, wrenched from the wall, scabs of plaster still stuck to its fixings, poked out amongst the debris with which the back of the lorry was nearly filled. Dismembered strips of what had once been a counter clattered on top of each other. A drawer whose contents he had once laid out so meticulously that he could tell a money order from a post cheque by the feel of its upper edge, hit the side of the truck with a jarring clang.

  He picked his way across the forecourt. A warning voice sounded from an upper window. ‘Oi!’

  The back door was open. Or rather, gone. There was another, louder, shout but Martin darted quickly inside. The old sorting office was stripped bare, though the daily break rotas were still stuck to one wall, and the Theston Civic Theatre calendar which Elaine brought in each year was still hanging from its nail on the back of the kitchen door. Where once had stood the door that led from the staff room to the main office there was now a gaping hole. Martin leaned through it and looked around. Two men in hard hats with handkerchiefs tied around their mouths were working away with crowbars and hammerdrills demolishing the counter, ripping down the shelves and tearing out wires and piping. Nothing recognisable remained intact except the Newmark wall clock. It had stopped, of course, and was turned at an odd angle, but it still hung in its usual place. Choosing his moment Martin stepped forward, towards it.

  ‘Oi! Get away from there!’ A voice rang out through the din.

  He turned and there was Crispin the builder.

  ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ he shouted, his narrow eyes tight with anger.

  Two other men joined him. One held a sheaf of drawings in his hand and Martin didn’t recognise him. The other was John Devereux. Martin could cope with Crispin’s absurd anger. It was Devereux’s cool half-smile that put the fear of God into him.

  ‘’ard ’at area this, Martin,’ said Devereux. ‘I’m sure Mr Crispin could spare one if you want to look around.’

  There was a splitting crack and crash from somewhere above them. Martin ducked instinctively as a shower of rubble and plaster fell about him.

  ‘I just came to see how the new post office was coming on,’ Martin heard himself saying before a dust cloud rose from the floor and he started to cough.

  The man with the charts looked bewildered. Crispin looked hostile. Devereux smiled sweetly.

  ‘Well, Martin, that’s what I’m doing.’ He turned to the builder beside him. ‘And it doesn’t look too good, does it, Mr Crispin?’ Crispin shook his head as Devereux spoke. ‘There’s dry rot and…’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Come on Joe, what else?’

  ‘Metal fatigue on supporting columns, concrete decay and subsidence at the north-west corner,’ Joe Crispin mumbled.

  Devereux looked across at Martin. He spread his arms. ‘Very bad. Going to take a lot of fixing.’

  ‘How long?’ Martin asked. He’d wanted it to sound like a genuine enquiry, but it came across harsh and brusque. If Devereux was angry he concealed it well. ‘I’m glad to see you take an interest, Martin. We’ll make sure you’re the first to know.’ Then he turned to Crispin, confidingly. ‘Martin’s working for us too, you know.’

  Crispin nodded grimly. ‘Well, he still shouldn’t be in here without a hat on. It’s against the regs. I’ll get done,’ he said.

  ‘You know the way, Martin,’ Devereux called after him, superfluously as it turned out. Joe Crispin gripped his arm tight and personally escorted him from the remains of the post office. Behind him there was another ear-splitting crash. When he turned round for a last look the Newmark wall clock had gone.

  Twenty-four

  Nick Marshall was disappointed in Sproale. He had hoped that he could rely on him to run Theston post office whilst he himself got on with the communications project. Now he was having to deal with his sentimental attachment to an outdated building and the man’s perverse refusal to appreciate all that Nick had done for him in securing in record time, and at considerable expense, a brand new, state-of-the-art post office that would be the envy of small towns across Britain. Towns at the end of a queue which he and Devereux had so successfully jumped. Even when they’d taken him into their confidence and paid him good money, Martin had pr
oved unable to help them with the simplest tasks – such as supplying information on the Rudge family. Nick had been left to pick up the pieces.

  Still, Nick thought to himself, as he ran, loose and smooth across the Suffolk heathland, into a freshly risen sun, at least there had been pleasures along the way.

  The time he had spent winning Elaine’s confidence had paid off handsomely. Over candlelit dinners, drinks and intimate evenings beneath the paisley duvet, Nick had slowly and patiently pieced together the story of what had really happened to Frank Rudge all those years ago. And it was dynamite. His fish processing business had indeed collapsed when the new cold store was built twenty miles further up the coast. But the firm who had built the new processing plant had systematically paid off all the main operators along the Suffolk coast. Like others, Frank Rudge had been induced by liberal amounts of largely German money to go out of business. The fishing jobs in Theston went and in their place had grown Frank Rudge Haulage and Rudge Padgett Properties.

  The revelation that Shelflife had acquired this information had worked wonders on Frank Rudge. He had been persuaded, in return for certain assurances of confidentiality, to release his stranglehold on the land around the harbour. He had also promised to recommend to the next meeting of the Council Planning Committee that land-use restrictions on the area should be reviewed. All in all a highly satisfactory outcome for Shelflife and some interesting sex for Nick Marshall. Now the pieces were nearly all in place. It was essential no one lose their nerve.

  He sprinted hard over the last hundred yards of soft, springy turf and pressed the stopwatch button on his wrist as he reached his car. He had broken his own record.

  * * *

  Nick Marshall made his next move carefully. At the end of the day’s business, he and Martin were alone in the post office. Martin was checking through the day’s counterfoils.

  Nick leaned back from his terminal. He flicked at his hair and locked his hands across the back of his head. ‘You know, I feel very good today, Martin. Very good.’

  Martin didn’t look up.

  ‘You know why that is?’

  Martin shook his head. He was counting.

  ‘Because I think at last, even you, even you, Mart, are beginning to get used to this place.’

  Martin slipped a rubber band around the counterfoils and dropped them into the drawer beside him. He looked Nick Marshall in the eye. He felt nothing but contempt for him now. ‘It’ll do,’ he said. ‘Until we move back.’

  Marshall switched off his terminal. ‘We won’t be moving back, Mart.’

  Martin paused in the act of picking out another batch of counterfoils. He took a deep breath. ‘I wondered when you’d get around to telling me that.’

  ‘Mart,’ said Marshall, ‘this is not in my hands. The old post office building was unsafe.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It was in Crispin’s report.’

  ‘And you believed it.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Marshall sprang athletically from his chair, hoping this panther-like movement might distract from the less graceful activity at the right-hand corner of his mouth. ‘The cost of refurbishing that office was going to be astronomical. All the efficiency improvements and the modernisation that the people of Theston have a right to would have been jeopardised.’

  ‘What about the Post Office?’ Martin protested. ‘Doesn’t it have a duty to maintain its properties?’

  ‘Mart, that building is going to cost half a million to get in shape.’ He checked Mary Perrick’s terminal and clicked that off. ‘The Post Office doesn’t have that sort of money any more.’

  ‘Well who does?’ asked Martin, helplessly.

  ‘Well, there might be a potential buyer. Shelflife is talking to someone.’

  Martin looked round at Marshall in disbelief. ‘Who?’

  ‘Nordkom.’

  Martin nodded slowly. Nick Marshall met his gradually comprehending stare as brazenly as he could. If only his bloody mouth would stay still.

  ‘The consortium that employs your company?’

  Marshall interrupted. ‘Our company, Martin. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘That’s very convenient, isn’t it,’ Martin said.

  ‘Very convenient,’ Marshall agreed.

  ‘Except for the people of Theston.’

  Nick Marshall moved away. His voice turned hard and practical. ‘Martin, I appreciate your concern for selling stamps and chatting up old-age pensioners, but in a few years almost everything that happens in a post office will be handled automatically. There will be no need for people to come in here every other day and wait in a queue for twenty minutes until the person in front’s stopped talking, just to have their docket stamped. People won’t need to do all that.’

  ‘They can sit at home instead, I suppose. Buy socks from the television.’

  ‘Martin, if that’s what bothers you, why don’t you go and run a social club?’

  ‘Because I run a post office!’

  Marshall had never heard Martin shout before. His pink, cherubic face was not suited to anger.

  ‘Look,’ Martin’s voice rose. ‘I want to know what’s going on!’ He stood jabbing a finger at Marshall’s crisp white shirtfront. You told me you wanted to make North Square the best post office in the county. ‘You told me we’d never end up in the back of a shop. Now you tell me this miserable rent-a-post-office is the best you can do. Well, if that’s the price to pay for your bloody project I don’t want to be involved.’

  Marshall watched and waited and slowly pulled in the line. ‘But you are involved, Martin. You’re a consultant.’

  Marshall watched him. Martin was red in the face and breathing hard.

  ‘We’ve invested in you, remember?’

  Marshall flicked the combination on the safe, and turned, his hand on the light switch. ‘Now we’d like some sort of return.’

  The lights went off leaving Martin in darkness.

  * * *

  To cycle home, in a good sunset on a crisp clear evening at the beginning of spring, had long been one of the pleasures of Martin’s life, but that evening he saw no joy in the majestic sweep of colour spreading far and wide across the sky.

  The money. If only he hadn’t taken the money. Never take anything you haven’t earned his father always said, and Martin had been impatient with him. His father had been known to refuse tips at Christmas.

  Now he could see that, as in many things for which he was ridiculed, his father had been right. The money was the root of all Martin’s problems. It was the cause of his powerlessness. It was his enemy’s strongest weapon. If only he had not picked up the money that night. If only. If only.

  As he free-wheeled down beneath the railway bridge and then worked hard to get speed up Abbot’s Hill, there seemed only one solution. He must give the money back. It would not be the end of the world. He could buy the chair another day. There would be other chairs, other opportunities.

  It would also free him from the clutches of Marshall and Devereux and enable him to start some kind of fight back. Whatever happened, his preferred and habitual option was no longer open. He could not do nothing.

  By the time he had crossed the bypass and negotiated the pockmarked surface of Marsh Lane his mind was made up. Not waiting to remove hat or coat or cycle clips, he ran upstairs, slammed his door shut and dialled Ruth’s number. He was still catching his breath when she answered.

  ‘It’s Martin,’ he said. ‘I’ve made a decision.’

  ‘Martin!’ cried Ruth. The chair! It’s here.’

  Twenty-five

  It lay awkwardly against the kitchen table at Everend Farm Cottage. A single limb jutting out at a forty-five-degree angle was wedged in a groove between the scuffed brown quarry tiles. Its heavy wooden back leaned up against the table-top, the corner of which stuck through the top two horizontal supports.

  Ruth leaned against the side of the kitchen doorway. She was wearing loose cotton trou
sers and an embroidered waistcoat over a black cashmere jumper. She held a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whisky and melting ice-cubes in the other. ‘Do I detect an aroma of Ernest on the seat?’ she asked.

  Martin was squatting on his haunches, running his fingers slowly along the lightly ridged wooden uprights. He ignored the question. Indeed, he’d barely looked at her since he arrived. She drew on a cigarette and watched him poring as intently over the rough, timber surfaces as if he were examining a newly discovered Rembrandt. As far as Ruth was concerned the chair was a big disappointment. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been expecting when Roger and Kate Morton-Smith had turned up on her doorstep. They were on their way to an antiques fair in Norwich, and they’d swapped the powder-blue Mercedes for a rented red van. There had been a minor panic when Ruth mislaid Martin’s money. She’d put it away behind a loose brick under the sink and forgotten which one.

  When they had gone she had tried to raise some enthusiasm for the graceless object, but had come to the inescapable conclusion that it was a horrid waste of hard-earned savings. Her relief at Martin’s ecstasy on seeing it was tempered by a genuine concern for his sanity.

  ‘Hell-o,’ she called, as Martin prowled round it yet again. ‘Anyone in there?’

  ‘Here,’ said Martin, taking hold of one of the arms, ‘help me lift this.’

  Ruth put the cigarette in her mouth and, eyes narrowed against the rising smoke, took the other arm of the chair.

  ‘It’s heavy,’ she grunted.

  Following Martin’s instructions she helped prop it up against the sofa. It was too high at first but Martin found some bricks and laid one at each corner and together they lifted the sofa until it rested on the bricks and this brought the seat up to the right height to balance the chair.

  Martin pushed it back on the sofa, as far as the central pole would allow it to go. Then he turned and slowly and respectfully lowered himself down on to it.

  It was big and wide and at first he looked lost in it, but once he had settled himself, once he had hesitantly slipped the worn leather harness over his shoulders and around his waist, once he was sitting back, palms flat against the arm supports, spreading his back along the length of the wood, an extraordinary change took place. The transformation Ruth had seen once before in this room began to happen again, only much more vividly this time. Martin became slowly and perceptibly more substantial. His face lost the earnest frown with which he had arrived, his eyes grew wider but softer, the line of his jaw grew stronger, his slim chest widened. Even the sight of his toes barely able to touch the ground did not detract from the remarkable display of possession.