Ernest Hemingway and Mary Get Back Together – Cuba, 1945

He treated the death of Roosevelt with some scorn – a man he’d never really liked – and put all politics very firmly out of his head.

Following the good doctors orders he read a little bit more each day, enjoying the experience of re-discovering Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, and James Joyce, especially Ulysses:

” Tiptop. Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and, let me see.

” Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants mustered and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree’s potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Except the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect…”

Hemingway laughed again at Joyce’s wonderful wit and remembered when he’d first read that in Joyce’s longhand in the front room of their apartment in Paris. It was as funny now as then. People forget, Hemingway thought, just how funny Ulysses is.

When Mary arrived on the 2nd of May Hemingway picked her up at the airport in the Lincoln and bore her back to the Finca like some visiting dignitary. And Mary found Ernest in much better shape than when she last saw him back in Paris. He was tanned, and his belly was flat, and his eyes shone, and he was kind to the pets, and considerate with the servants, and ate “…like a gourmet.”

Hemingway was delighted Mary liked the cats and dogs, and they her, and her very presence banished his loneliness, and for whatever reason Mary’s company made him want to remember the war, and start writing about it. Mary also brought the good news that Jack had finally been liberated, and was well and that he was coming to the Finca in June to recuperate.

Ernest and Mary spent their days alone and naked on the Pilar, making love as and when they felt like it, and for a recovering Ernest that was quite often. Hemingway put his new found desires down to reading D.H. Lawrence. Mary put it down to the fact that she was, in Hemingway’s eyes, the most beautiful woman in the world.

” Isn’t that the case, Sugar, that your new found sexual drive is down to the fact that I’m the most beautiful woman in world?”

Hemingway put his book down and looked at Mary.

“No, D.H. Lawrence, Honey.”

With that Mary pushed Hemingway overboard into the deep blue sea.

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