motherly and protective in the way she held me. I sensed an almost familial appeal in this direct, unabashed intimacy; a need to offer comfort where comfort was needed. Or perhaps she appealed for my understanding, for my protection, for my friendship? I was not sure. Was she lonely? Not without a circle of friends and intimates, I mean, but deeply lonely, a solitary who would cling to a stranger briefly, a sudden flare of recognition and companionship, then emptiness, nothing, the awful dragging void of melancholy. Could a visionary such as she—a leader, no doubt, among her people—ever be other than alone? Were not such fierce people always alone? Perhaps it was only what I wanted to believe of her.
‘Now
you’ve
said sorry to me and
I’ve
said sorry to you,’ she said. ‘Hey, Max! Come on!’ She let go of me and flung open her arms so that her clothes bloomed suddenly about her. ‘You and I have got to get past this stage of trying to out-apologise each other.’
We both laughed.
‘There, we’re even now,’ she said and she tucked my arm against her side again—where she and I evidently felt it was most right for it to be. ‘
I’ll
buy
you
a drink. And don’t tell me you haven’t got time for just the one before your appointment. Be late for once.’ She stood still and examined me. ‘I’ve never struck one like you. You old blokes defend your work viciously to thelast breath in your bodies. You never,
never
say sorry. Hey, folks, I got it wrong. I’m sorry. No. Never that. I’ve never heard it. You’re a rare bird, Max. What do people around here think of you? I’ll bet you’ve got a few of them puzzled. You’re not getting rid of me until we’ve had a tête-à-tête.’
She adjusted my arm against her side and we set off down the street. She was more sedate now in her pace, more certain, I suppose, that she had secured a companion for the next hour or two. ‘So where’s the pub?’ she said. ‘Point me at it.’
By the way, I am not making any of this up. It all happened to me only a little over a year ago, just as I am reporting it here. I loathe books that are made up, as if life is not enough.
We were sitting across from each other at a table in the recess of a window, the remains of our meal still on the table. I had never been inside the bar but had often passed it on my way to the railway station. Vita was talking, the long slender fingers of her left hand played with her glass—her wedding hand, she said, without a ring, holding it up, ‘See?’ And she smiled her vulnerable, sad smile, not the fierce smile of the warrior princess. Though her hand had once carried the precious ornament for a little while, she said. I watched her. She had lovely hands. She played with her glass, her head on one side, considering—what? Her voice was loud and penetrating at first, and the young man who had broughtour meal had looked across at her and listened, and she had given him to understand that she knew he was listening to her and that she did not care. As the bar filled up with drinkers her voice drew back and became softer and more private.
I noticed, suddenly, that my wineglass was empty again. The last time I had looked it had been full. I wondered, for an instant, who could have emptied it. Beyond the window, outside in the street, it was already dark. The bar was crowded now with young people and was noisy with their laughter and shouting. Beneath the clamour of their voices their tribal music maintained a steady beat. I had stopped trying to follow what Vita was saying some time ago and was attending to the throbbing of the music, which to my surprise I found calming and conducive to a kind of inner and solitary melancholy. I should have been dead by now, or at least drifting towards that state on the irresistible currents of an ever-deepening stupor.
The steady throb of the music was precisely the sound of my uncle’s old single-cylinder tractor. An enormous green monster, it