keep it, if only for minutes, in the emotionless drought of measurements and number.
That number of times she had driven it without incident, without event almost, with nothing approaching a narrow escape. He hadn’t been anxious. Of course he hadn’t. Not once had he been tempted to pick up the phone and check. They were there with Sally’s mother. Perhaps they would phone him and then again perhaps they wouldn’t. When he had eaten he might phone Sally’s mother and ask how she was. But he doubted later if he had thought those things at the time. He hadn’t been thinking of them at all. His mind had been elsewhere, concerned with a manuscript purporting to be the diary of a runaway slave who had married a Havasupai woman thatTalisman might buy if it could be authenticated and the price wasn’t too high. He had brought a copy of it home with him. It lay on the kitchen table, open at page four. Strange that now he couldn’t even remember whether or not Tom Outram had bought that book.
He was pottering about, getting himself a meal. Not defrosted pizza but baked beans, because he preferred tins to the microwave. He read another paragraph while he was opening the tin. There was a bottle of Meursault in the fridge, half full (or half empty if you were a pessimist, though he never had been), its neck corked with one of those wine-saver stoppers. He had poured himself a glass of wine while he was heating up the beans. The slave’s diary probably wasn’t genuine, was fiction, but might be all the more publishable for that.…
The doorbell rang at one minute to seven. He thought it was someone collecting for a charity. He went to the door feeling for his wallet in his pocket.
The police officers gave him no details then. That came later. He learned all about it later. Then, at one minute to seven, his glass of wine half drunk, his baked beans burning on the stove till the policewoman turned off the plate, they asked him to sit down, they told him of an accident, then of serious consequences, then of fatality. He had stared at them. He remembered asking them to repeat what they had said, he was so certain his hearing was playing tricks, he
couldn’t
have heard that, this
couldn’t
be happening to him.
For a long time he associated the smell of burnt tomato sauce with the collapse of his life, the loss of all that made his happiness. Once he had smelled it in a workmen’s café in Camden Town and felt as sick as if he had swallowed poison.
The day after the police came he learned that Sally had been driving carefully, prudently, obeying all the rules, within the speed limit. Elizabeth was beside her in the passenger seat, Daniel in the back. The car had come to a stop at a level crossing over the Eastern Region railway line somewhere near Ipswich. It was at the foot of a hill.The lorry behind her, a twenty-ton container from the docks at Felixstowe with defective brakes, came down the hill too fast and slid into the back of the car, precipitating it through the closed crossing gates into the path of the oncoming train.
The three of them were killed instantly. The driver of the train was injured, but all the passengers were unhurt. As for the lorry driver, he had a bang on the head and badly bruised knuckles. Two hundred and twenty-three times it had been all right and all those times that two hundred and twenty-fourth time had been waiting to happen, coming nearer every time, with the force of destiny. If you believed that sort of thing. Roman didn’t.
He didn’t go to the inquest, but he went to the funeral. He
was
the funeral. Sally’s dying mother was there and Sally’s sister, but he hadn’t wanted anyone else and had told people not to come. He slept heavily that night and woke in the belief that Sally had got up early, would appear in a minute with tea for him. The knowledge and the pain pouring back tore from him cries of violent protest.
Two weeks afterward, having resigned from the Talisman Press, he
That number of times she had driven it without incident, without event almost, with nothing approaching a narrow escape. He hadn’t been anxious. Of course he hadn’t. Not once had he been tempted to pick up the phone and check. They were there with Sally’s mother. Perhaps they would phone him and then again perhaps they wouldn’t. When he had eaten he might phone Sally’s mother and ask how she was. But he doubted later if he had thought those things at the time. He hadn’t been thinking of them at all. His mind had been elsewhere, concerned with a manuscript purporting to be the diary of a runaway slave who had married a Havasupai woman thatTalisman might buy if it could be authenticated and the price wasn’t too high. He had brought a copy of it home with him. It lay on the kitchen table, open at page four. Strange that now he couldn’t even remember whether or not Tom Outram had bought that book.
He was pottering about, getting himself a meal. Not defrosted pizza but baked beans, because he preferred tins to the microwave. He read another paragraph while he was opening the tin. There was a bottle of Meursault in the fridge, half full (or half empty if you were a pessimist, though he never had been), its neck corked with one of those wine-saver stoppers. He had poured himself a glass of wine while he was heating up the beans. The slave’s diary probably wasn’t genuine, was fiction, but might be all the more publishable for that.…
The doorbell rang at one minute to seven. He thought it was someone collecting for a charity. He went to the door feeling for his wallet in his pocket.
The police officers gave him no details then. That came later. He learned all about it later. Then, at one minute to seven, his glass of wine half drunk, his baked beans burning on the stove till the policewoman turned off the plate, they asked him to sit down, they told him of an accident, then of serious consequences, then of fatality. He had stared at them. He remembered asking them to repeat what they had said, he was so certain his hearing was playing tricks, he
couldn’t
have heard that, this
couldn’t
be happening to him.
For a long time he associated the smell of burnt tomato sauce with the collapse of his life, the loss of all that made his happiness. Once he had smelled it in a workmen’s café in Camden Town and felt as sick as if he had swallowed poison.
The day after the police came he learned that Sally had been driving carefully, prudently, obeying all the rules, within the speed limit. Elizabeth was beside her in the passenger seat, Daniel in the back. The car had come to a stop at a level crossing over the Eastern Region railway line somewhere near Ipswich. It was at the foot of a hill.The lorry behind her, a twenty-ton container from the docks at Felixstowe with defective brakes, came down the hill too fast and slid into the back of the car, precipitating it through the closed crossing gates into the path of the oncoming train.
The three of them were killed instantly. The driver of the train was injured, but all the passengers were unhurt. As for the lorry driver, he had a bang on the head and badly bruised knuckles. Two hundred and twenty-three times it had been all right and all those times that two hundred and twenty-fourth time had been waiting to happen, coming nearer every time, with the force of destiny. If you believed that sort of thing. Roman didn’t.
He didn’t go to the inquest, but he went to the funeral. He
was
the funeral. Sally’s dying mother was there and Sally’s sister, but he hadn’t wanted anyone else and had told people not to come. He slept heavily that night and woke in the belief that Sally had got up early, would appear in a minute with tea for him. The knowledge and the pain pouring back tore from him cries of violent protest.
Two weeks afterward, having resigned from the Talisman Press, he
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