He walked to the other end of the bench like a cowboy just off a horse. He looked like a hollowed out Richard Harris, wearing tailored jeans, a horizontally striped cotton t-shirt and a Miss Marple gardening hat. ‘May I sit here?’
‘Of course.’
He sat, nodding. Then, after a while, ‘What a quaint little town this is.’
‘Really? With all the Tudor and the Halls?’
‘Oh, granted. But I’ve just come back from living thirty years in Australia.’ Ah, that was the tang in the otherwise smooth, cultivated. ‘Sydney. Divorced my wife after all that time. Left her the house. A million dollars’ worth. The house, not her. Though I used to think she was. Women can do that to men. It’s because they have to ensnare – not all, of course, but quite a number in my experience – as they have fewer basic freedoms than us. Going to the pub alone, for instance.’ He had brightly cold blue eyes, that held no reflection of what he was saying. ‘I’m back here living in the flat I bought for my mother thirty years ago, which she lived in till she was a hundred. And then, at quite an elderly to do so age, moved. Just kidding. At first, I thought the flat was a bit poky – just two bedrooms – compared to what I’d had in Australia, that the ex-wife now has full enjoyment of. What do they say? “Don’t bother getting married, boys, just buy a house for a woman you hate”. After my wife up and left, I dated a real witch. A South African. In wine distribution. Her job took her everywhere she wanted. I didn’t find her a passion, but there was something about her. She could move things – say there was an ashtray on the table: that – just with another consciousness. I came into her life at the tail end of a her going with a journalist there in Sydney. He used to find a way of mentioning her in his columns, even though her being in the wine trade was completely irrelevant to what he wrote about. He was the rugby correspondent. He’d compare her sales pitches at vineyards to a clearing of the scrum. And he was more than obsessed with her. She had by now officially parted ways with him, she thought, and taken up with yours truly, but he wouldn’t leave it. Followed us about the night spots of Sydney. Hung around outside her flat. I said to her, “Look, I’m a strong man. I can go and talk to him. Tell him if he keeps at it, I’ll make things unhappy for him”. She said I wasn’t to worry, as she had things in hand that would put an end to it once and for all. She meant, turned out, she’d asked for a placement for her job in Paris. As I was lying in bed on our last day, the sports journalist rang, and while she was speaking to him, I realised in more than one way it was a good thing for me to be getting out. His story ends – literally – in that he followed her to Paris and ended up committing suicide in her flat.’
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