The Sunday Gate

Lavinia had not expected to envy the ease with which Hugo found the teaspoons.

There were more reasonable things to feel uneasy about on her first visit to the brothers’ house: being introduced as his girlfriend, carrying a cake she had bought because she refused to audition with baking, wondering whether everyone would be looking for signs of what had persuaded him to leave. Instead he opened a drawer without thinking, took out six spoons and began laying the table while conversation continued around him.

He fitted there. No one needed to tell him where to stand.

The visit fell on a warm Sunday at the beginning of July, almost three months after he had left. She had accepted the invitation to lunch after he made clear that he would enjoy her company and she could decline. She had wanted to see this part of his life. Wanting had not prevented her from being clumsy with the cake box.

“Bought,” she told Bertram when he took it.

“An excellent method. Consistent results.”

“I wasn’t sure what people liked.”

“We have not yet formed a common position. Give us time.”

He smiled, and she stopped gripping her bag. Hugo put a hand lightly against her back as they went into the dining room. The touch was brief and ordinary, but it pleased her that he had not become physically remote because they were here.

Lunch was less solemn than she had feared. Someone had put too much mustard in the dressing; a disagreement arose about whether this was possible. Hugo took the stronger side of the argument and lost. Lavinia found herself laughing at an account of a broken washing machine, then looking at him to see if he had heard the detail she liked. He had. Their smiles met across the table.

Nobody asked her to explain him. Nobody congratulated her. When conversation turned to her work, Bertram asked a sensible question about shift patterns and listened to the answer without trying to discover a moral lesson in payroll.

Afterwards Hugo went to look at a repaired window with one of his former housemates. Lavinia helped carry plates, and Bertram thanked her before telling her to sit down.

“You aren’t on the rota.”

“I know where I am with plates.”

“Most of us do. It’s why there are rarely any left by the time a difficult conversation starts.”

She laughed, then hesitated. “Has this been difficult?”

He sat opposite her. “Today?”

“Him leaving.”

Bertram looked towards the doorway where Hugo had gone. “We miss him. We see him. Both seem reasonable.”

“You make that sound easy.”

“I have had longer to say it than you have had to hear it.”

She folded her hands in her lap. Outside, Hugo was laughing at something, his voice warmer and less considered than she had heard it in many rooms. She loved that laugh. She disliked discovering she was not the person who had invented it.

“I think I wanted him to be relieved by everything,” she said.

Bertram’s attention did not alter into the interested look of someone acquiring a confidence. He let the sentence stand.

“That would be a tiring requirement,” he said eventually.

“For him.”

“For you as well.”

She glanced up. He was not offering to bless or diagnose their future. He was an older friend who would personally miss somebody, and had refused to make missing him an accusation.

“I don’t know how this will turn out,” she said.

“No.”

The lack of reassurance surprised a laugh out of her. “You’re not very encouraging.”

“I hope I’m hospitable. That is more within my reach.”

Hugo returned carrying an empty jug and asked whether anyone wanted tea. Lavinia wanted to kiss him for the happiness still on his face. She also wanted, shamefully, to remove him from the room before she became less certain of her own place.

She accepted tea.

· · ·Scene break

They left in the late afternoon. At the gate Hugo paused to check that he had his phone; Lavinia stood beside him looking at the worn step. The visit had been good. She could honestly say that, and almost did in the bright voice that would close discussion.

Instead she waited until they had turned into the lane.

“You looked happy.”

“I was. I am.”

“I know.”

He looked at her. “But?”

“I didn’t say but.”

“You stopped walking.”

So she had. He stopped too, moving aside to let an elderly couple pass. When they were alone on the pavement she looked directly at him.

“Is ordinary life with me enough?”

The words sounded worse aloud: large, greedy, almost impossible to answer truthfully. His face changed with concern, and she wished she had not given him an opportunity to reassure her on a heroic scale.

“I don’t know how to compare those things,” he said.

She flinched.

“Lavinia, I want to be with you. I also miss living there. If I tell you one cancels the other, I’ll be lying.”

“I didn’t ask you to lie.”

“No. I’m trying not to offer it because it would make this minute easier.”

That was so plainly him that she had to look away. He would rather be painfully accurate than comfortably vague. She had admired it when the truth was that he wanted her.

“I thought I understood,” she said. “In the park. About breakfast.”

“You did.”

“Understanding is rather different when I’m standing in the kitchen.”

He nodded. He did not take her hand, and she was grateful he had left her body out of the work of agreeing with him.

“I don’t want to be a test you keep taking,” she said. “Whether you made the right decision. Whether the life you gave up has been worth it.”

“You aren’t.”

“I might be making myself one.”

He thought about that, giving it the seriousness she had asked for without making it a catastrophe.

“I’ve sometimes kept quiet about missing them,” he said. “Because I didn’t want you to think I was asking you to supply what I missed.”

“And I’ve noticed you keeping quiet, and supplied an explanation.”

“An unhappy one?”

“Not my best work.”

He smiled a little. She stepped closer, but did not yet take his hand.

“Tell me something you missed today.”

“Will that help?”

“I don’t know. It might be better than what I’m inventing.”

He looked back along the lane, then at her.

“Knowing the whole shape of a Sunday without arranging it. People coming and going, a meal already part of the day. I liked belonging to that.”

She listened. It hurt in a smaller and more bearable place than the thing she had imagined, which was that he had seen a whole life with her and found it insufficient.

“I couldn’t make that for you.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t want to.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

This time she believed him without being perfectly reassured. She put her hand in his because she wanted to, and they began walking.

At her flat he accepted a glass of water and sat on the sofa while she changed her shoes. They were still a little quiet. She let it be an afternoon with an awkward portion instead of trying to redeem it through an especially affectionate ending.

When she sat beside him, he asked, “May I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

The kiss did not answer the question at the gate. It reminded her that they could want each other while learning how to live with an answer neither could make tidier.

She leaned against him afterwards. “I did like lunch.”

“I’m glad.”

“And Bertram.”

“He liked you.”

“He didn’t say everything would be fine.”

“That sounds like him.”

She laughed, and Hugo kissed her temple. They stayed until the room began to darken, without making promises about how either of them would feel the next time they went through that gate.