” You really believe that?”

” Yes, how could it be otherwise?”

” Are you saying that had you stopped with Hadley you would never have had the success you had after your marriage to Pauline?”

” I think not. Pauline’s wealth gave me the freedom to write as I wanted to write.”

” But surely you were writing as you wanted to with Hadley?”

” Yes, but not enough. I had to rely on journalism to make a living,with Pauline I could concentrate on writing novels.”

” Very unfair on Hadley, and Buck has told me how much you loved her.”

” I did, yes, still do if truth be told. But it’s too late now, and I have Mary.”

” You seem to me to be a man who wants to destroy everything.”

” Oh, I know deep down that I’m to blame for the break-up of my marriages, except the one to Martha, that bitch brought that upon herself.”

Pete held her tongue.

During another long lunch Lanham told Hemingway he’d never read The Torrents of Spring. Ernest immediately fetched a copy and watched over Lanham as the old soldier read the novel out loud with Hemingway laughing at his own biting, and somewhat shameful, satire at the expense of another writer who’d been of huge help to Hemingway in his youth. Lanham, unlike his wife, kept his thoughts to himself.

Towards the end of their stay at the Finca Mary returned from Chicago, and over yet another long lunch Hemingway began to pontificate about the Russians, and their place in world history, and how the US should leave them alone to get on with things. To Pete Lanham, a good army wife, this sounded like appeasement, and at one point she asked Hemingway where his umbrella was, which was an allusion to 1930s British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Hemingway, with eyes blazing, jumped to his feet and was about to hurl his wine glass at Pete when Mary intervened and calmed the situation. Within moments Hemingway was his charming old self again.

After the Lanham’s had gone Hemingway confided to Mary that the headaches had come back with a vengeance some days earlier.

” I must write and apologise to Pete.”

” Yes.”

” I really haven’t been myself.”

” No.”

” I’ve started a novel.”

” Good.”

” The black Labrador doesn’t like it.”

” What about the cats?”

” Oh, they love it.”

” Good. Make love to me, sugar.”

Note: although based on fact some of the scenes and dialogue are imagined.