by Joseph Hone
‘We’re not the people we seem.’
‘No, and it’s just great luck if the real person coincides with the other real person in love.’
‘And if they can go on seeing the real person that way,’ I said.
‘Ah, yes. There’s the rub.’
‘That’s the risk you have to take in love. “Better a day as a lion than a lifetime as a lamb”.’
She considered this. Then she said, in her definite way, ‘Yes, that’d be quite something.’ She paused again, smiled. ‘I’d like to get to wear that high-hatted lion-lover’s hat of yours!’
We talked effortlessly then. You can tell when there’s a lucky coincidence, that flash of lightning between two people, when the talk is easy, always on the brink of laughter. I gave her my phone number and drove her back to the hotel. ‘We’ll be in touch before you go back.’ I said.
‘Yes, I hope so.’
But when she disappeared into the lobby of the Randolph, I didn’t know if either of us meant it. It might all have been the wine, the good haddock pie, the release of coming to terms with each other, and with someone we’d both loved, lost or betrayed.
She phoned next day at lunchtime. ‘I have a break in the conference,’ she said. ‘It’s all rather heavy going. Some British lawyer: “The Law of Tort in Property Conveyancing”.’
‘My God.’
‘And worse, there’s an even more weighty address tonight before dinner: “Estate Law: Disposable and Non-Disposable Assets, as between the Quick and the Dead”.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Not really. Anyway, I don’t want to go. I feel among the quick. Can I return your favour and buy you a meal in Oxford tonight?’
‘How will you get out of the dinner?’
‘I’ll say I have a headache.’
‘That’s rather bounderish.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Exactly.’
We ate at a Greek restaurant I knew on the Banbury Road and took up effortlessly where we’d left off the previous night. The red Demestica was good but the kebabs were tough.
‘You need to grill them very hot and quickly,’ I said. ‘Over wood, with really good lamb, not the cheap cuts. I do them on my big fire in the barn in winter.’
‘What – on a spit?’
‘No. I have an old metal half-gate, and chicken wire over that. Got it from Tom, my farmer landlord up the lane – had it as part of his sheep fencing.’
She laughed.
I said to her, ‘I’m happy.’
‘So am I.’
‘Unhappiness makes one monstrous.’
‘Shall we have another half bottle?’
I nodded and we looked at each other, before she broke the silence. ‘Ben’ she said, ‘It wouldn’t work, with you and me. It worked with you and Elsa, because I think that’s how she really was. But I know I’m really like I am.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and there was a stab of sadness.
‘Though I wish …’
She stopped, looking at me, trapped in each other’s gaze, as we’d been that first time we’d met outside the barn in the coming storm. Then her eyes broke away, and we chatted of other things, before I drove her back to the Randolph.
We kissed by the entrance, a kiss just short of our lips. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ I said.
‘Yes, we will. And will you come to New York?’
‘Yes. And you – back here sometime?’
‘Certainly.’
A smile and she walked up the steps without another word, but inside the door she turned back and waved, as if to confirm a further promise of something, I knew not what. But that didn’t matter now. Loving and truth-hunting with women – I was going to have to put that aside for the moment. I’d tried, and found you could plumb to the depths of any human heart without finding the truth there. What mattered now was that Martha had seen some virtue in my trying. And more than that she’d brought back hope, and I felt that small thrill in the pit of the stomach that comes when you know you can do good work again, where in my painting, at least, I could display, in a portrait or a nude, the real truths of another, where their secrets could emerge in a dazzle of light and colour, on an incorruptible canvas. Martha had already given me as much as any lover. I could paint again.
It had been cloudy most of the day, but the sky cleared as I drove home, and there were pinprick stars all over. Very softly, I started to sing ‘The Skye Boat Song’.
ALSO BY JOSEPH HONE
FICTION
The Private Sector
The Sixth Directorate
The Paris Trap
The Flowers of the Forest
The Valley of the Fox
Summer Hill
Return to Summer Hill
Firesong
TRAVEL
The Dancing Waiters
Gone Tomorrow
Children of the Country: Coast to Coast Across Africa
Duck Soup in the Black Sea
MEMOIR
Wicked Little Joe
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2011 by
The Lilliput Press
62–63 Sitric Road,
Arbour Hill
Dublin 7, Ireland
www.lilliputpress.ie
This digital edition published 2012 by
The Lilliput Press
Copyright © Joseph Hone, 2012
ISBN print paperback 978 18 435 11892
ISBN eBook 978 18 435 13193
A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library.
The Lilliput Press receives financial assistance from
An Chomhairle Ealaion / The Arts Council of Ireland