Close to Hugh Read Online Free PDF

his exquisite salad, teak claws clap-clacking in his clutching old paws. It is Hugh’s job to be civil and pour the wine, and when they sit at table, to enjoy the steak and swallow the potato things whole. He hears himself say, “How long are you visiting, Burton?” The plaguing question he had not meant to voice.
    “We thought you’d never ask!” Burton puts out a fat hand and covers Newell’s, which lies discarded beside his still-full plate.
    Newell seems not to be eating, but has opened the second bottle of Pinot. He looks up and meets Hugh’s eye. The frank, unfamiliar shock of contact makes Hugh realize they haven’t talked in a long time. He finds his breath constricted.
    “I’ve asked Burton to stay here for good,” Newell says.
    Fucking fucking fucking hell.
    Newell’s face is a mask. Only his mouth moves, as if there’s a person under there somewhere, in the dark. “We’re both alone, and neither of us is—”
    Burton simpers. “Oh, I’m an old crisis, Hugh knows that! But I think there’s something to be said for returning to safe harbour, don’t you? After life’s journeying.” The port, the steak, the wine have made him expansive. Powerful enough, here, to lie back in his chair. “I see myself as Newell’s—what? His elder brother.” Burton’s pasty hand squeezes Newell’s, which does not move. Then it does, turning to clasp his kindly.
    “His loving introducer to matters of the heart.” Burton’s eyes are downcast, his mouth a reflective rosebud. It’s a pose out of an old acting manual: emotion recalled in tranquillity.
    Every time, every time Hugh sees the toad Burton, Newell’s voice comes back to his ear from years ago, saying, “I was twelve, but he knew already what I was.”
    What, not who.
    Back then, when they were twelve, Hugh knew who Newell was. Not Burton’s pet. Newell was an open heart, an open face; a boy as unhappy as he was himself, but without the sideways look he acquired after Burton introduced him.
    Hugh remembers feeling it even in childhood, the powerful fury rising in his chest, his head, into his jaw, and gently turned aside by the control of delicate tapping.

7. I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE
    Ivy stands in the empty living room. Four French doors (three French hens) open onto a garden pavement that leads over to a low wall, and the river flowing gently along. It’s pretty. They go upstairs, turn right, and the woman opens the door.
    A beautiful empty room. Silence.
    Ivy takes a breath.
    She’s so lucky to get this, a broad, airy bedroom in a pleasant house by the river. For a month-long artist residency, the school won’t keep her in a hotel. The other offer is the drama teachers’ spare room, but their marriage is coming apart and Ivy can’t bear fighting. This place is perfect. An old family house built in the thirties, substantial, stained glass, inlaid floors, front and back staircases. But only two people living in it, a woman and her son, in grade twelve at the school.
    The woman, the owner of the house— Ann , and Jason is the son—Ann walks to the window and tries to open it; for air, or to show Ivy a silver knife of river coming up beside the house, but it seems stuck. Ivy’s window (hers already) looks over the short driveway. The tree outside has lost half its leaves, but the black branches are pretty. The glass is spotless.
    Perfect, Ivy thinks. Her ill-arranged life back in Toronto is dirty, upsetting, and crammed full of stuff. This is so clean and bare—an empty bookshelf, an empty dresser, an empty bed.
    “There’s an ensuite,” the woman— Ann, Ann —says. She opens the door to display white tiles, a bevelled window over the bathtub. “This used to be the master. Before. Jason’s dad left us, last Christmas, but we’re getting over it.” She’s blonde, a bob cut straight across and dragged behind her ears. Minimalist hair. “He was in management at the Quaker plant, he ran off with his secretary. Like a fifties