Heat Wave Read Online Free

sunshine on ploughlands, upon the billowing gold of an August cornfield. All very fine for us, thinks Pauline – playing at Marie Antoinette, soothing the troubled soul with contemplation of nature. Time was, this place was for real.
    Luke is heading for the long grass of the orchard, wet still with dew, in which he will get soaked. It is almost as tall as he is. Pursuing
him, Pauline sees it for an instant through his eyes – an inviting wonderland of sensual possibilities, a cyberspace of light and shade, of things that wave and twitch and bob. She picks him up, redirects him towards the house, and sees Maurice coming out of the french windows towards them.
    Maurice has a mug of coffee in his hand. Maurice is fuelled by coffee throughout the day. ‘Hi, you two,’ he says. ‘Where’s Teresa?’
    ‘Gone shopping. You have guests for the weekend. Remember? Food has to be bought.’
    Maurice smiles – the lop-sided Maurice smile. It is a smile that seems designed to side-step difficulties, such as any implications of what Pauline has just said. He looks down at Luke, who is clutching his knees, asking to be picked up. He pats his head. Maurice has not offered to look after Luke while Teresa goes shopping because it would not have occurred to him. Indeed, it seems that he had not taken on board the proposed shopping expedition. ‘How do you spell
gesellschaft
?’ he inquires.
    Pauline tells him. ‘I thought this book was about the British tourist trade?’
    ‘It is indeed. But I need to demonstrate a bit of cultural eclecticism, don’t I?’ He lifts the mug to his lips and looks at Pauline over the top of it with that winning and attentive look that is central to Maurice’s charm. Those on the receiving end feel flattered, and enhanced.
    But Pauline, who is familiar with the look, remains impervious. She sees Maurice peering at her above a blue-and-white china mug in the garden at World’s End, and that Maurice gives way to another Maurice, leaning up against the mantelpiece of her flat in London, lifting a wine glass to his lips and staring over it into the crowded room. ‘So that’s the daughter,’ he says. Red wine with the light shining through it, and Maurice’s eyes, intent.
    Maurice gives in to Luke’s urgent noises and picks him up. He holds him awkwardly. Maurice is not adroit, physically, which is unexpected in a man of swift and elusive mental processes. He drops things and knocks things over. He is a bad driver. He is hopeless at tasks like putting on an electric plug or changing a tyre. Some of this clumsiness is attributable to a minor limp, the result of an accident
in childhood. He lurches slightly, under certain circumstances. But that does not account for the hamhandedness, in evidence now as he shifts Luke from one arm to the other. And of course fatherhood has come late to Maurice. He is old at forty-four to be the father of an infant. Harder to pick up new skills, when you have tipped forty.
    Maurice is terrified of age. He is incredulous that age is stalking him, that the ageing process applies to him also, that he is not somehow exempt. Pauline has seen the sudden onset of panic, has noted the way in which he makes sure to surround himself with younger people, the way that he keeps up a frenetic pace, is always on the move, is always shooting off in pursuit of some new interest, some new acquaintance. And of course men thus affected frequently turn to women much younger than themselves.
    Pauline has known Maurice for six years. She knew him in a desultory way for three years before he married Teresa. His books were published by an imprint of the publishing conglomerate for which she worked. She met him at a sales conference and struck up a mild acquaintance. She met him again at a party and experienced Maurice in conversational over-drive. Maurice is a beguiling conversationalist – flattering and stimulating. He phoned her to check on the title of a book she had mentioned. The