The Pre-War House and Other Stories

The Yacht Man

When the man arrives, Linda invites him inside. She shows him into the living room and offers him a seat on the sofa as she sits down, but he prefers to stand.

She says, ‘I need a door.’

She has looked in B&Q but wants something a bit different. His Yellow Pages advert stood out. She thought he would bring a catalogue from which she could choose the type of wood she wants, the type of handle. She has considered stained-glass panels. But he doesn’t have a catalogue for her to browse through. What he has in his hands, what he opens and places on the table between them, is a display book full of pictures of the astonishingly fine work he once did on a yacht. He shows her pages of gracefully curving and gleaming mahogany chests of drawers and cabinets. She admires his work and he is pleased.

She offers him a cup of tea but he wants water. Colin, keeping out of the way in the kitchen, fills a glass and the kettle.

The yacht man, turning the page, shows Linda various views of exquisite marquetry. She touches the pictures with her fingertips, as if she might be able to feel that smooth, exotic wood.

The sturdy, beech-effect table on which the book lies is not beautiful but it was the practical choice while the kids were young. They have grown up and gone now though. She recently brought down from the loft a lovely side table which she has put in the hallway.

She found it at a flea market. This was before Colin, when she was with Vincent. Her eye was drawn to some engagement and eternity rings, and a table with Queen Anne legs, and she said to Vincent, ‘What do you think?’ But when she looked around, he was elsewhere, looking at a diving helmet. She bought the table anyway. A few years later, she heard that Vincent was living on a marine research vessel in the middle of some ocean.

‘It’s all very nice,’ says Linda, ‘but I just need a door.’

‘I can do a door,’ he says, without looking up from his photographs. He seems disappointed.

He takes measurements in the hallway, but when he leaves he still hasn’t shown her a single front door.

After locking up behind him, Linda returns to the living room. She and Colin have supper in front of the television and go up to bed.

In the morning, she finds the yacht man’s water glass on the table in the hallway, and the mark it has left on the wood.

She won’t call him. She will look again in the Yellow Pages for someone who can make her an ordinary door, something solid, attractive enough, inexpensive. Perhaps she will go back to B&Q. In the meantime, and afterwards, she will — with partial success — try to remove that perfect white circle on the Queen Anne table where the yacht man placed his glass before he left.