The Widow's Tale Read Online Free PDF

spotted some etching on the wall behind the counter. It was some wide open landscape, which could’ve been any old place (I had a quick glance at it myself a little while later as I left the shop) – the South African veldt as easily as the Fens. But the old fellow seemed quite taken with it and became highly animated. And asked the shop owners where it was.
    Without missing a beat they both said, ‘Where would you like it to be?’ in unison. Which struck me as wit of the highest order.
    Needless to say, the old duffer didn’t think it half as clever as the rest of us. And once he’d got his change he gathered up his books and limped off in a bit of a grump. But his lack of humour didn’t appear to diminish the shop-owners’ spirits, and they went back to their newspaper and their pricing, or whatever it was they were up to. And I carried on leafing through my Holbein.
    I honestly don’t know why I didn’t just buy it. It’s some weird superstition, whereby I have to return it to the shelf and leave it a couple of days, and in the meantime gauge how much I want it. And if I decide I really do want it and I go back and it’s still there then it was meant to be.
    Anyway, I started to think to myself how this couple – let’s call them David and Jennifer – given the right circumstances, could quite easily become friends of mine. Judging by the quality of books on their shelves they’re pretty sophisticated. And, as has already been noted, in possession of a biting wit which is a prerequisite for anyone I’m going to respect enough to call a friend. And I began to imagine me and David and Jenny laughing and drinking in some rural boozer. Me and David and Jenny having dinner at my widow’s cottage and talking deep into the night.
    I even imagined myself working in the bookshop a couple of days a week – just, you know, to get me out and about. And my being party to the bookshop banter – arguing, in a light-hearted manner, about whose turnit was to make the tea or coffee, or pop out to buy the biscuits (‘… and this time get some proper bloody biscuits – the sort that have chocolate on the top’).
    Perhaps that’s another reason I didn’t buy my Holbein. I wanted the excuse of going back. They had one of those portable gas stoves that make such a racket when you light them. I could think of a lot worse places to spend my Tuesday mornings than a cosy little shop like that, with decent people, surrounded by books.
    But I wasn’t halfway home before I started having my doubts – and began to pour cold water on my little fantasy. What if Dave and Jenny didn’t want an odd number at their dinner party? What if I didn’t quite fit in – numerically or otherwise – with their mah-jong evenings? Wasn’t sufficiently bohemian for the Jazz Night out at Cromer? Or sufficiently scruffy for the Folk Club at King’s Lynn?
    I’d parked up, locked the car and turned around before I realised that something was the matter. That the line of trees before me had a gap in them. More significantly, that when I looked to my left the original gap had been miraculously replanted, only for a new gap to appear along the way.
    It always takes me a moment or two to work out what’s happening – that these tiny omissions are the mad little outriders bringing news of even greater ocular failings and visual fireworks. I was in my mid-twenties before I understood that it was some sort of migraine. Giving things their proper name can sometimes make themless threatening. All the same, I now simply know what’s coming – that very soon it will feel like I’m looking out at the world through a frosted window, or have been staring at the sun.
    It’s that initial moment of realisation that’s always the most alarming. If I can get to a tap pretty quickly and splash cold water onto my face and over my neck and shoulders I can occasionally nip it in the bud. To be honest, I’m not convinced it makes the slightest difference,