Free English Correspondence by Janet Davey

thought.
    â€˜You’re bloody rude.’ But he picked it up. She hoped. All she could hear was Paul’s voice. No sounds from outside. That was all right.
    She was methodical in her tidying. She followed a routine that left her otherwise free. The last thing to be done was to shake out the clean linen, square it up on the tables, smooth it flat. She usually liked this moment, creating expanses of smoothness, but today she didn’t stop for it. She walked away quickly. Before she got to the door she turned and looked down the length of the room. She saw it as it was, empty and everyday, but in the middle of the long table was the place where Maurice had slumped in his chair. He had gone to a position of weakness that was death and people had straightaway taken advantage of it. First his colleagues, then Paul. It seemed to restore them to talk about it and because they weren’t close to him they felt no pain. It was like taking a drug with no side effects. There must be side effects, Sylvie thought, though she couldn’t at the moment work out why no one was suffering from them. She closedher eyes. When she opened them she was careful not to look back in that direction. She stared instead at the corner where the Englishman had been sitting. There was a book on the floor.
    Paul had gone. He had left a message on the desk with many underlinings. Everything was underlined, she now saw. This was to show that she should have taken the call. It was a booking: her affair. She sat down, switched the computer on, waited, typed in the entry, a week on Friday, dinner for four and two double rooms. She looked at the screen, but felt the book on her lap.
    She had never read it, though the title was familiar. George might have mentioned it. She couldn’t ask him about it now, whether he thought it worth reading. She would read it anyway. She wanted to. She picked it up, glanced inside the front cover. It was blank. There was some sort of bookmark. She opened it cautiously, not wanting to lose his place. It was an envelope, a blue one. She turned it over. There were lines of writing, not entirely even, slanting downwards, the ink was blue-black, old-fashioned, real ink. The writer was old, probably female. The stamp was first class and the postmark was smudged. She examined it carefully, trying to disregard the fact that there in front of her were the Englishman’s name and address.
    She put the envelope to one side by her right elbow and opened the book at the page that he’d got to.
    A bachelor’s loneliness is a private affair of his own; he hasn’t to look into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and inflicting it at the same time; ’tis his pillow; he can punch it an he pleases, and turn it over t’ other side, if he’s for a mighty variation; there’s a dream in it. But our poor couple are staring wide awake. All their dreaming’s done. They’ve emptied their bottle of elixir, or broken it; and she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he to yawn with a crony; and they may converse, they’re notaware of it, more than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as possible she’s away to the ladies, and he puts on his Club. That’s what your bachelor sees and would like to spare them; and if he didn’t see something of the sort he’d be off with a noose round his neck, on his knees in the dew to the morning milkmaid.
    â€˜Did you see my message? I left it on the desk for you.’
    Sylvie jumped.
    â€˜You were miles away, weren’t you? Did you see it?’ Paul said.
    â€˜Yes. That was fine. Thank you.’
    â€˜It’s good to see you reading again. You must be feeling more yourself.’
    â€˜Maybe.’
Feeling it and inflicting it,
Sylvie thought. What she read haphazardly made more sense than what he said to her. In a different century she would have been one of those women who stuck a pin in the Bible to find out what to