The Novels by Bruce Chatwin

Author:Bruce Chatwin [Chatwin, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Forty-six

An hour after Jim’s funeral, the four principal mourners had wedged themselves in the Smoke Room of the Red Dragon, ordered soup and cottage pies, and were thawing out. The day was raw and drizzly. Their shoes were soaked from standing in the slush-covered graveyard. Manfred and Lizzie were dressed in shades of black and grey; Sarah wore slacks and a blue nylon parka; and Frank the haulier, a bulky man in a tweed suit several sizes too small, hung his head with embarrassment and stared at his crotch.

At the bar, a cider-drunk slammed down his tankard, belched and said, ‘Aah! The wine o’ the West!’ A man and a girl were playing a computer game, and its electronic warbling filled the room. Manfred racked his brains to stave off a row between his wife and sister-in-law. He leaned across and asked the players, ‘What do you call zis game?’

‘Space Invaders,’ the girl said glumly, and emptied a packet of peanuts down her throat.

Lizzie pursed her colourless lips and said nothing. But Sarah, her face already flushed from the fire, unzipped her parka and made up her mind to speak.

‘Nice onion soup,’ she said.

‘French onion soup,’ said the thinner woman.

There was a silence. A party of climbers came in and dumped their rucksacks in a heap. Frank refused to touch his soup and continued to stare at his crotch. His wife tried once again to make conversation.

She turned to a huge brown trout in a glass case above the mantelpiece, and said, ‘I wonder who caught that fish.’

‘I wonder,’ Lizzie shrugged, and blew at her soupspoon.

The barman’s girlfriend came with the cottage pies: ‘Yes,’ she said in broad Lancashire, ‘that trout’s quite a talking point. An American caught it in the Rosgoch Reservoir. An airforce-man, he was. He’d have had a Welsh record if he hadn’t gutted it. He left it here to be stuffed.’

‘Quite some fish!’ Manfred nodded.

‘It’s a hen,’ the woman went on. ‘You can tell from the shape of the jaw. And a cannibal to boot! Has to be to reach that size! The taxidermist had a terrible time finding eyes big enough.’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah.

‘And where there’s one, there’s two. That’s what the fishermen say.’

‘Another hen?’ Sarah asked.

‘A cock, I should imagine.’

Sarah glanced at her wristwatch and saw that it was almost two. In another half hour they had their appointment with Lloyd the lawyer. She had something else to say and gave a hard look at Lizzie.

‘What about Meg?’ she said.

‘What about her?’

‘Where’s she going to live?’

‘How should I know?’

‘She’s got to live somewhere.’

‘Get her a living van and a few fowls and she’ll be perfectly happy.’

‘No,’ Manfred interrupted, the colour invading his cheeks. ‘She not be happy. You take her from The Rock and she go crazy.’

‘Well, she can’t go on living in that pigsty,’ Lizzie snapped.

‘Vy not? She live there all her life.’

‘Because it’s for sale!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Sarah swivelled her head – and the quarrel flared out into the open.

Sarah believed The Rock should be hers.

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