Reasonable Man

On Tuesday evenings, for fifteen years, Leonard Maye has walked from Clerkenwell to Islington to have his French corrected.Nobody asked him to learn it. He has no house in France and does not take his holidays there. He has not said one word of it to the woman it was for.Her name is Nina. He met her in Aix-en-Provence in the summer of 1988, on the same morning that his oldest friend David did. Ten days later, in the sea below a cliff near Cassis, she asked him something in French, and he did not understand it. David married her. Leonard was best man, and gave a very good speech.Now David is dead, and Nina has written to say that she hopes Leonard will come to the funeral.He tells her it is a difficult week.Leonard is a reasonable man. Everybody who knows him says so, and means it kindly. This is the week that it stops being possible.