Hemingway's Chair

by Michael Palin

  For a long time neither of them spoke.

  Then, as slowly as it had occurred, the change began to reverse until it was Martin, pink-faced, smooth-skinned, shy apologetic eyes set wide in round, regular features, who sat before her once again.

  ‘I’ve done it now,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve done it now.’

  * * *

  He had never really told Ruth much of what happened in his other life, his life outside Hemingway. It had been irrelevant. Once he was with her there had been so much else to talk about. Today he told her for the first time most of what had been happening to him these past few weeks. At the end he hung his head.

  ‘I don’t know how to deal with it. I’ve never been tested before.’

  For the first time, Ruth felt she would have liked to put an arm around him. To be Grace and Hadley and Pauline and Mary and Marty all rolled into one. She poured a whisky and handed it across to him.

  ‘It’s not too late, Martin.’

  He shook his head. ‘I think I’ve missed my chance.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s Martin talk.’

  Martin nodded and showed a trace of a smile.

  ‘That’s not a phrase your man would have used,’ she went on. ‘He would have said get amongst those bastards. Give them what they gave you.’

  ‘It’s easy in books,’ said Martin.

  Ruth persisted. ‘You have one great advantage. They won’t expect you to do anything.’

  Martin gave a half-laugh, half-shrug. ‘How does that help me?’

  Ruth threw her cigarette into the fire and stood up. Then she took off her waistcoat and shifted the small pine dining table to one side of the room.

  ‘You ever done martial arts?’ she asked.

  Martin frowned. ‘You mean karate?’

  ‘That kinda thing.’

  Martin laughed soundlessly and shook his head.

  ‘Well, it’s big in the States. Especially for unmarried women living in New Jersey.’ She selected a spot in the centre of the room. ‘Now, what they teach you is to let your assailant make the first move and to use their movement to your advantage.’

  She beckoned to him. ‘Get up.’

  ‘What?’

  She took a stance, feet planted firmly astride. ‘Get up!’

  Martin did so, reluctantly. She moved round to face him. ‘Now Martin, I know you’re a pacifist but imagine I just called your mother a whore.’

  Martin laughed and shook his head. ‘What are you doing?’

  Ruth’s eyes blazed. ‘Come on now. I just called your mother a whore, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Look Ruth, I don’t want to do this.’

  ‘Okay. Ernest Hemingway was a lying pansy who couldn’t write for shit.’

  Martin shook his head but he didn’t smile.

  Ruth taunted him again. ‘He was a fat, sad, drunken old slob who couldn’t even write a line for the Kennedy inauguration when they asked him to.’ Martin said nothing.

  ‘But he’d never have let anyone walk over him the way you let Nick Marshall walk over you. He’d despise you.’

  He lunged at her. Ruth waited till he was almost on her. ‘See. You let him come. Throw all he’s got at you then –’ she grabbed his arm, side-stepped and twisted his wrist, ‘take him off balance and zap! He’s on the floor with your knee in his neck.’

  Which was indeed where Martin was, head squashed hard into the rug which smelt of dust and damp and talcum powder. Ruth was on top of him, her shin across the back of his neck, pinning him down.

  Ruth congratulated herself. ‘Hey! That was pretty good.’

  ‘Eurghh!’ said Martin.

  ‘You okay?’

  Martin grunted again and Ruth released him and stood up.

  Martin rubbed his neck and Ruth put out a hand. He took it and she pulled him up on to his feet. He reached unsteadily for the back of a chair.

  ‘Just remind me again why you did that?’ he asked her.

  Ruth reached for a cigarette. ‘One, because I don’t get enough exercise, and two, to demonstrate that a little guy can cause a lot of trouble if he knows how to move. Did you eat something?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You will be.’ She went into the kitchen in a businesslike way and called back to Martin. ‘I bought some wine. Let’s be civilised and plan your revenge over dinner.’

  When the time came for him to leave they had drunk two bottles of red wine as well as a Scotch or two, and thoroughly reviled everyone concerned with the demise of Theston post office.

  Martin quoted, verbatim, whole passages on the techniques of partisan warfare from For Whom the Bell Tolls. Between them it was agreed that, like its hero, Robert Jordan, Martin should take on the enemy from behind the lines.

  His first task, they decided, had to be to select and brief someone who felt the way he did and who had a high profile in the town. Once such a figurehead was in place a campaign could be organised around them. The evening ended with an ambitious attempt to load Hemingway’s chair on to the back of Martin’s bicycle. This was an abject failure. They staggered back to the house with it, helpless with laughter. The chair remained leaning drunkenly across Ruth’s sofa.

  * * *

  Ruth couldn’t sleep that night. This wasn’t unusual for her, but this time it wasn’t words, names, dates and page references that kept her awake. It was a delicious, shameless, wholly unintellectual feeling of rank lustfulness. She knew, as she lay, on her back, on her side, on her other side, then on her back again, in the silent pitch darkness of the Suffolk night, that Martin Sproale wanted to fuck her and she wanted to fuck him and that it was going to happen sooner or later.

  As she lay there, enveloped in this delectable fantasy and not knowing quite how to make the most of it, she began to laugh. Quite quietly at first, then slowly and gradually louder and deeper and heartier until she feared she might bring the Wellbeings hurrying down the path. And this thought made her laugh even more. It wasn’t a warm night, but Ruth was sweating through her loose black cotton pyjamas as she pulled herself up out of bed, wrapped a bathrobe around her, lit a cigarette and sat down at her desk to add a PS to the letter she had started that morning.

  ‘PS Hem-fan update (hot off the presses!)

  British men are not at all what they appear to be. Underneath every calm and quiet exterior there lurks a beast and beneath every beastly exterior lurks someone dying for mother’s milk and an early night. Mild Martin has today turned into a passable impersonation of a Horseman of the Apocalypse. (An Horseman of the Apocalypse, sorry. Anne Horseman-of-the-Apocalypse – there’s a new heroine for you.) Mart is hopping mad and looking for ass to kick. Why? The collapse of the monarchy? The imminent demise of the British currency? The ordination of women? No. What has turned Martin from mouse to Minotaur (does that work?) is that THEY HAVE MODERNISED HIS POST OFFICE. Apparently there are dark forces at work not a half-dozen miles from where I write who will stop at nothing until they have given him up-to-date facilities and worse still, provided them for other people as well.

  The country is warming up. In every way.

  Watch this space.

  Yours for ever and a day,

  Ruthie.

  Twenty-six

  On one of the first warm days of March, when the skies were blue and innocent as June, Martin Sproale could be seen cycling through Jubilee Park and down the gentle hill that led away from the centre of town down to the old merchants’ houses on Mulberry Green. He stopped outside the most handsome of them. It was half past nine on a Monday morning and Martin, fired with enthusiasm for his new role as urban guerrilla, had decided to take a week of his annual holiday. Leaving his bicycle leaning by the hedge he crunched his way across the gravel to a columned and porticoed front door. He pressed a well-polished enamel doorbell on the bit where it said, helpfully, ‘Press’. He cast a quick look in the direction he’d come from and was pleased to see his arrival appeared to have gone unnoticed.


  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman with full grey hair only partially concealing a strawberry mark that spread down one side of her neck. She wore an apron and held a duster.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Mrs Harvey-Wardrell in, please?’

  He was shown into a drawing room, filled with sunshine. The lady with the duster tut-tutted and pulled down a blind. She peered critically at the surface of a carved oak chest.

  ‘That sun’s a menace,’ she said, and scowled at the great clear sky outside.

  A moment or two later, the approach of Pamela Harvey-Wardrell was heralded by the sharp, urgent yelp of a dog and the sound of a slithery scrabbling of paws on freshly-polished floor. A voice rang out from the hallway.

  ‘Hilda! Caspar shouldn’t be here, and he knows that. Will you please put him in with Benjie. Oh, and those things in the billiard room are for the deaf.’

  The drawing room door swung open. Mrs Harvey-Wardrell saw Martin Sproale bent double over the Turkish carpet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  Martin straightened up breathlessly. ‘Just taking my clips off.’

  ‘Not at the post office?’

  ‘No, I’ve taken a week’s holiday.’

  ‘Oh!’ She threw her head back dramatically. ‘How I envy you! Perry and I love to get away at this time of year. But alas he’s frightfully busy and I’ve been roped in to organise the Oxfam evening. Would the post office care to help out? It would be awfully good if you could. A few packets of envelopes for the odds and ends stall?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Most kind. The police have promised stickers.’

  Mrs Harvey-Wardrell sat herself on the edge of a chaise longue and Martin noticed for the first time that she had rather good legs. She crossed them elegantly, absently fingered the pearls that hung down over the top of an expensive angora jersey and indicated Martin to sit as well.

  He sat cautiously on the edge of a wing-backed armchair.

  ‘It’s the post office I’ve come to see you about, Mrs Harvey-Wardrell.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  She listened to him with the same expression he had seen in pictures of white missionaries in Africa. Earnest and slightly distracted.

  ‘I’ve reason to believe that if we’re not careful we may never have our old post office back again.’

  ‘You mean we’ll have to keep using that neon-lit rabbit hutch?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘It’s an excrescence.’

  ‘Well, exactly, and knowing you feel that way, I wonder if you would be interested in, well, in leading a campaign.’

  At the word ‘leading’ Mrs Harvey-Wardrell had shown momentary interest. Now her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  ‘Campaign? What sort of campaign?’

  ‘To get the post office back into North Square where it’s been for the last sixty years.’

  ‘Well…’ A cloud passed over Mrs Harvey-Wardrell’s long and stately features. Martin thought to himself how remarkable it was that the upper classes did not just have bigger houses. Noses, eyes, ears and chins all seemed larger than the national average. ‘Martin,’ she said, ‘Much as I abhor that abortion of a place where you work, there is a teeny problem.’

  Martin was quick to reassure her. ‘There’s hardly any work involved, Mrs Harvey-Wardrell. All you would have to do is put your name to it.’

  Mrs Harvey-Wardrell raised her eyes in saintly fashion as if what she was about to say was wretchedly hard for her. ‘You have to understand, Martin, that I am not a totally free agent. My husband is, as you know, an extraordinarily successful economist, working at the very highest levels of international finance. But, Martin, he is not a sentimental man and I fear…’ She paused on the word ‘fear’. With her eyebrows and her upper lip raised and nostrils flared she looked for a moment like a horse refusing a jump. ‘I fear he will be less moved by the desire to preserve the traditional tone of Theston post office, than to make a considerable amount of money by acquiring it for more profitable endeavours.’

  Martin leaned forward, frowning. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘He’s buying it.’

  ‘Buying it?’

  ‘Well, not buying it himself of course. He’s arranging the finance. Apparently the Post Office top brass can’t wait to get rid of it. Your friend Nick Marshall was round here in January asking for advice. Doesn’t he tell you anything?’

  Martin looked down, grimly. ‘He tells me what I need to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I would do something if I could.’

  Martin shifted uncomfortably. He felt desperately foolish. Outwitted and cheated. And this had been going on since January? He rose from the chair.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, and I … I’d rather you didn’t mention my visit. Especially to Mr Marshall. It was only from the best intentions.’

  Mrs Harvey-Wardrell accompanied him to the door. She seemed regretful.

  ‘The menfolk make all these decisions. I suppose they know what they’re doing. I’m told it’s all going to be frightfully beneficial all round.’

  Martin nodded ruefully. A Pekingese dog waddled towards them. She hoisted it into the air and nuzzled its snub face.

  ‘Caspar, you’re hideous.’

  She turned to Martin. ‘Try the vicar. He’s frightfully keen on causes.’

  * * *

  The Reverend Barry Burrell liked to be called Barry. He was good-looking in an unforced way and was much disliked in Theston. His predecessor, Dr Wyngarde, had behaved in an impeccably vicarish way, speaking the old Prayer Book clearly, visiting the sick ineffectually and never preaching a sermon longer than twelve minutes. Barry Burrell’s avowed aim was to be a hands-on rector. To this end he had paid special attention to taking the church into the community. He had held services in pubs and old folks’ homes, blessed stock cars and once held midnight mass in the canteen of Theston Rubber Ltd. In return for these favours he hoped the community would come in to the church. Traffic wardens were encouraged to read the lesson, welders to bring their equipment to harvest festival and one of the local bus companies to sponsor the Christmas crib. He had a firm handshake and a close friend called Tessa.

  He was unhelpful to Martin.

  ‘Jesus Christ our Lord is the figurehead, Mr Sproale, not me.’

  They talked in one of the side chapels at St Michael and All Angels. In the background Harold Meredith, their recently appointed vigilante, pottered, rearranging hymn books and trying to catch what they were saying.

  ‘I’m one of the toilers in the vineyard,’ Barry was telling Martin. ‘If you would like me to come in to your post office and wash the feet of your employees, symbolically of course, I would. If you want to use our church for a service of reconciliation between the divisions of the restructured post office I would gladly offer it in His name, but for me to be a leader would be an assumption of powers that are only His to deploy.’

  ‘What would you feel like, Reverend Burrell –’

  ‘Barry, please.’

  ‘What would you feel like, if you had to carry on your business in the back of a sweetshop?’

  Barry Burrell liked a joke and he laughed heartily. Then he took Martin’s hand, shook it warmly, disappeared into the vestry and closed the door behind him.

  Martin heard the subdued sound of female laughter. ‘Choir practice,’ explained Harold Meredith.

  Twenty-seven

  For the next three days, as discreetly as possible, Martin canvassed the great and the good of Theston. He chose only those he felt would be sympathetic, but the response was disappointing. Cuthbert Habershon, the well-respected, recently retired District Coroner, was too busy growing roses. Dr Cardwell preferred to save the Health Service first and the Post Office second. Norman Brownjohn, the ironmonger, Theston’s senior shopkeeper, was very keen for the post office to move from Randall’s, but only as far as Brownjohn’s. The one local worthy who offered unequivo
cal support was not on any of Martin’s lists. Indeed Martin had deliberately tried to avoid him. Be that as it may, Harold Augustus Meredith had put his house and forty-seven years of experience in the Royal Army Pay Corps at Martin’s disposal and, in the absence of any other candidate, Martin had reluctantly accepted. As soon as the details were finalised, Mr Meredith would begin to circulate a petition. But first the name of the campaign had to be fixed, policy formed, statements of intent drawn up. And it was already Thursday.

  A squally March wind spattered the windows and rattled the roof as Martin pulled the Corona Portable Number 3 towards him. For once he didn’t need to feel apologetic or inadequate. At last he had something important to write. Five hours later, when the wind had subsided, leaving low grey clouds and an early twilight, Martin slipped his finished work into an envelope and cycled over to Everend Farm Cottage. He needed Ruth’s word processor and printer. He also needed her approval. Ruth read his prospectus carefully, but without making the noises he expected.

  ‘Is it all right?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘It’s kind of long. All that historical stuff. I mean, who is this guy Padge? Was he martyred by the Romans or something?’

  ‘He was the old Postmaster.’

  ‘But he doesn’t need three paragraphs, right? I mean this is a call to arms, not a novella, Martin. People don’t have time to read more than a page.’

  ‘They have time in Theston,’ he said, defensively.

  ‘Look, I know about these things, believe me. I have leafleted, Martin. Three Mile Island, Stop the Whaling, Nicaragua. I came into this world bearing leaflets, and I know two things. Keep it short and make sure you mention the phone number at least twelve times.’ She riffled through his copious sheets of paper. ‘You have no phone number here at all.’