Martha looked up to see the waiter standing in front of her.

” Plus vine, madam?”

” Hmm? Oui, merci.”

The waiter poured more wine, refilled the little dish with more cheese, bowed and retreated, and as he did so Martha heard some distant machine-gun fire, and then all was silent, except for a radio, somewhere inside the cafe, playing Sidney Bechet, a mournful, growly piece on the soprano saxophone which Martha found hard to recognise, until Bechet suddenly, almost like a conjuror, slipped back into the familiar melody of George Gershwin’s Summertime. Martha smiled at the man’s playing, at his ability to take something so familiar as a tune like Summertime, which everyone felt they knew – almost owned – and turn it into something else entirely. It was what Lawrence was doing in Women In Love, Martha thought, taking the familiar, and by the use of words, and repetition, disguise it, mix it up, and mix up the readers emotions. It is what Hemingway had done when he met Martha.

In 1935 Martha Gellhorn had published, to great acclaim, her book about unemployment, The Trouble I’ve Seen, a book that was to make her name. Martha’s style was described by the columnist, Lewis Gannett – whose column was syndicated across the US – as writing that “…burns. Hemingway does not write more authentic American speech. Nor can Ernest Hemingway teach Martha Gellhorn anything about economy of language.” It was a best seller in the making. After a hectic round of book promotions across the States Martha suggested to her mother that she take her, and her brother Alfred, on a Christmas vacation to Key West. This they did, and after a tiring bus ride from Miami, and feeling rather stranded in a quiet backwater that was Key West in those days, which smelled of fish, and not much else, Martha’s mother suggested they all take a drink in a bar across the road from the bus stop called Sloppy Joe’s.

The now famous watering hole wasn’t particularly busy that day, and after ordering three beers, Edna Gellhorn asked Martha if the large, rather scruffy, and rather dirty man sitting at the end of the wooden bar, reading his mail, was Ernest Hemingway? Martha said she didn’t know. But she couldn’t take her eyes of the man she knew was the famous novelist.