Facing the Tank Read Free

bunches of anemones. He liked anemones because they looked dead until one gave them something to drink. He liked the deep colours as they revived. Miriam had liked dried flowers, often spraying them with gold or silver paint. She had liked the way they lasted. The flat, and then the house where she had insisted they move, had crackled with their spidery shapes. They would catch on his cardigan sleeves as he passed by and he would relax on a sofa only to have them rustle in his ear.
    Two little girls slid past on roller skates, attached by headphones to the same Walkman. A woman who had to jump out of the way with her shopping bags appealed for support in her wrath but he was smiling and eating chocolate fudge brownies in the street so she turned elsewhere, doubly indignant.
    The Booths’s flat lay on the first floor of one of the high white terraces that swing out on either side of Ladbroke Grove. It faced south over an attractively undercultivated park that one could reach from a spiral staircase off the living room balcony. Evan threw open the balcony windows as he came in, letting in new-mown grass to fight with last night’s tobacco smoke. He flung himself full length on the sofa – he was very tall, so this involved resting his feet on an adjacent table – and stared up into the sunshot greens of the chestnut trees. He had eaten one brownie too many and was dizzied with sweetness. Euphoria had evaporated with his hunger.
    Freedom. As Miriam would have said, whoopee shit. He was in his middling forties and he had never had an affair. He couldn’t drive and tried to avoid air travel. Try as he might he could not grow a paunch and he remained firmly what his English agent, Jeremy called ‘ coincé heterosexual’. What price freedom? Evan picked up the Standard to ogle a spread of skinny models flaunting ‘this summer’s look’, but it was hard to read it lying down so he soon let it fall. The telephone rang. It was Jeremy.
    Though arguably coincé , Jeremy was no longer heterosexual. Following certain discoveries regarding the frequency of his trips to the family’s vet, his wife had divorced him. She had kept the children. The dog and Jeremy now lived with said vet in a state of seamless domesticity that varied only from his former married bliss in its higher joint income and more fashionable cookery. For all the disparity in their ages, Jeremy contrived to treat Evan as a kind aunt might an eccentric child.
    ‘Evan, I’ve fixed up Brooster for you.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Barrowcester to you but it’s pronounced like rooster with a b on the front. The inhabitants are called Barrowers though which you pronounce as spelt.’
    ‘How do I get there?’
    ‘Express-ish train from King’s Cross and it takes two hours plus. Now let me check that I’ve got this right. You wanted to use both the cathedral and the school libraries, yes?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Super. Well I’ve spoken to the Dean who says you’ll have the run of the library and can photograph anything you like as long as they get an acknowledgement – we’d send them a signed copy obviously – and I’ve been on to the headmaster of Tatham’s – only they call him the Lord – and he says that’s fine there too only you had better talk to the librarian about photographs. Have I done well?’
    ‘You have, Jerry.’
    ‘Now I must hurry but I want to take you out to lunch tomorrow. How about Manzi’s at quarter to?’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘Now Deb’s made arrangements for where you can stay so can I hand you over to her?’
    ‘By all means.’
    ‘Such a shame she’s not available. We must find you someone else and have you and whoever to supper soon.’
    ‘See you at Manzi’s, Jerry.’
    ‘Bye.’
    There was a pause as Jeremy pressed buttons then Deborah came on the line. Of his team of beautiful assistants, Deborah was Evan’s favourite because she had wavy raven hair and was extraordinarily capable. She also had the kind of husky