Read Online Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Julian Barnes
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opened the walnut box in which she kept her foreign coins. Inside, it was divided into twelve square sections, each compartment lined with purple velvet. Graham stared at the leftover currency. Lire meant Benny, or that other fellow, or—well, he had to admit it—himself, and their five days in Venice after they were married. Nickels, quarters and a single silver dollar meant Lyman. Francs meant Phil, or that creep with the jeep—Jed, or whatever he called himself. Marks meant, oh stuff it. And this, Graham thought, picking up a large silver coin, what about this? He read round its edge: R.IMP.HU.BO.REG.M.THERESIA.D.G . Then the other side: ARCHID.AUSTR.DUX.BURG.CO.TY.178O.X . He smiled to himself. A Maria Theresa krone. Nothing doing
there
, at least.
He played the same game with her wicker basket full of book matches. She didn’t smoke, but collected matches from restaurants, hotels, clubs—anywhere that gave them away. The only difficulty he struck, as he rooted through the relics of careless cocktails and drunken dinners, of dozens upon dozens of wholly Grahamless occasions, was working out whether or not Ann had actually been to the places whose free publicity he was now sifting. Friends knew her collecting habit, and would look out for particularly garish or obscure items to add to her basket. Graham had even encouraged them to. So how could he get his bearings? There was no point in getting jealous unless you were accurate about it; or so it seemed to Graham.
Irritated by this uncertainty, he moved on to Ann’s shelves and started hunting for books which she was unlikely to have bought for herself. Several of them he had already identified as presents from her previous escorts. These he pulled out, almost for old times’ sake, and read the inscriptions: ‘to my … ’, ‘with love from’, ‘with much love from’, ‘love and kisses from’, ‘x x x from’. What a dreary bunch, Graham thought: they might as well get some printed labels if that’s all they were going to say. Then he pulled out Ann’s copy of
Gormenghast
. ‘To my little squirrel, who always remembers where the nuts are kept’. Bloody Jed—yes he was called Jed, as the scrawny signature of a quite well-educated orang-utan confirmed; the creep with the jeep. Yes, well, that was expected. He would have given her
Gormenghast
. Atleast the bookmark showed she hadn’t got past page thirty. Quite right too.
Gormenghast
, he repeated contemptuously to himself. And
Jed
. What had Ann once said about him? ‘It was a brief, therapeutic affair.’ Therapeutic? Well, he supposed he could understand. And brief: he was pleased about that, and not just for the obvious reason. He didn’t want the house cluttered up with the collected works of Tolkien and Richard Adams as well.
Graham began to play a game with himself, based on Strip Jack Naked. He had to find the books on Ann’s shelves which had been given her by other people. If he didn’t find one such book in four tries, he lost the game. If he got one on the fourth go, he had another turn; if he got one after only two gos, he saved himself two gos, and so had six chances in the next round.
With just a little cheating he managed to keep this game going for about twenty minutes, though by that time the pleasure of the hunt obscured less and less adequately the glumness of victory. As he sat on the floor and looked at the pile of books which represented his winnings, he felt the approach of a daunting sadness. On top lay a copy of
The End of the Affair
. ‘Don’t think unkindly of me. It has been wonderful. In time you’ll see that too. It’s been almost too good. M.’ Ha—Michael. Just the sort of prickish thing he would put.
It’s been almost too good
. What he really meant was, ‘Why didn’t you behave badly so that I could leave you without any guilt?’ Michael, the good-looking sporty one with—so Ann assured him—an engaging way of shaking his head and blinking shyly at
there
, at least.
He played the same game with her wicker basket full of book matches. She didn’t smoke, but collected matches from restaurants, hotels, clubs—anywhere that gave them away. The only difficulty he struck, as he rooted through the relics of careless cocktails and drunken dinners, of dozens upon dozens of wholly Grahamless occasions, was working out whether or not Ann had actually been to the places whose free publicity he was now sifting. Friends knew her collecting habit, and would look out for particularly garish or obscure items to add to her basket. Graham had even encouraged them to. So how could he get his bearings? There was no point in getting jealous unless you were accurate about it; or so it seemed to Graham.
Irritated by this uncertainty, he moved on to Ann’s shelves and started hunting for books which she was unlikely to have bought for herself. Several of them he had already identified as presents from her previous escorts. These he pulled out, almost for old times’ sake, and read the inscriptions: ‘to my … ’, ‘with love from’, ‘with much love from’, ‘love and kisses from’, ‘x x x from’. What a dreary bunch, Graham thought: they might as well get some printed labels if that’s all they were going to say. Then he pulled out Ann’s copy of
Gormenghast
. ‘To my little squirrel, who always remembers where the nuts are kept’. Bloody Jed—yes he was called Jed, as the scrawny signature of a quite well-educated orang-utan confirmed; the creep with the jeep. Yes, well, that was expected. He would have given her
Gormenghast
. Atleast the bookmark showed she hadn’t got past page thirty. Quite right too.
Gormenghast
, he repeated contemptuously to himself. And
Jed
. What had Ann once said about him? ‘It was a brief, therapeutic affair.’ Therapeutic? Well, he supposed he could understand. And brief: he was pleased about that, and not just for the obvious reason. He didn’t want the house cluttered up with the collected works of Tolkien and Richard Adams as well.
Graham began to play a game with himself, based on Strip Jack Naked. He had to find the books on Ann’s shelves which had been given her by other people. If he didn’t find one such book in four tries, he lost the game. If he got one on the fourth go, he had another turn; if he got one after only two gos, he saved himself two gos, and so had six chances in the next round.
With just a little cheating he managed to keep this game going for about twenty minutes, though by that time the pleasure of the hunt obscured less and less adequately the glumness of victory. As he sat on the floor and looked at the pile of books which represented his winnings, he felt the approach of a daunting sadness. On top lay a copy of
The End of the Affair
. ‘Don’t think unkindly of me. It has been wonderful. In time you’ll see that too. It’s been almost too good. M.’ Ha—Michael. Just the sort of prickish thing he would put.
It’s been almost too good
. What he really meant was, ‘Why didn’t you behave badly so that I could leave you without any guilt?’ Michael, the good-looking sporty one with—so Ann assured him—an engaging way of shaking his head and blinking shyly at
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