The Blue Book

Lavinia bought the blue notebook because loose pieces of paper made the subject look like a shopping list. Then she made it look like a shopping list anyway.

Home. Money. Children. Faith. Work.

She stared at the page and added, underneath, How frightened am I allowed to be?

That was the one she did not show Hugo immediately.

They had been dating for nearly seven months. Since the conversation about the volunteer role, marriage had become a word they could use without laughing afterwards. He wanted it with her. She wanted it with him. Neither wanted to mistake the force of that desire for knowledge of how to live together.

On a wet November Sunday she brought the notebook to his rooms. He looked at the cover and asked whether he was about to be examined.

“Possibly. There may be supplementary questions.”

“May I ask some?”

“You’d better.”

They sat at his small table with tea. She opened the first page, keeping her hand over the last line until it felt ridiculous and she moved it away.

He read the question about fear. Then he looked at her.

“As frightened as you are,” he said.

“That is a generous answer with almost no practical use.”

“I can try a less generous one.”

She smiled and began with money because numbers were something she could say without hiding. They each described income, savings and ordinary commitments. Neither carried a concealed debt or depended on the other for a home. Together they could afford a modest flat and still retain money each could use without requesting permission.

Hugo suggested proportional contributions to shared costs because his income was lower. She agreed, then asked whether he would mind her buying something frivolous when he chose not to.

“I might envy it,” he said. “That doesn’t make it mine to forbid.”

“Good. There will be books whose covers offend you.”

“I already accept that.”

They laughed, and then she asked about work in the house. He began with cooking and cleaning. She interrupted to ask who would notice when they needed detergent, arrange repairs, remember that someone had to be home for a delivery.

He looked down at the table. “I have been used to systems other people helped maintain.”

“So have I, at work. At home the system is me.”

“I don’t want that.”

“I don’t want a promise that you will help when asked.”

He nodded slowly. “We could each own some of it. Not leave you supervising whether I remembered.”

They talked through examples until the conversation became tiresome, which was useful information. He hated cleaning a bath; she hated dealing with tradespeople who addressed every explanation to the nearest man. They did not solve a lifetime of domestic work at the table. They discovered they could discuss it without assigning virtue to whichever task sounded worst.

When they reached children, Lavinia closed the notebook for a moment.

“I would like the possibility,” she said. “I don’t want our wedding to be a starting pistol.”

“Neither do I.”

“And I can’t promise you a child.”

“I would be marrying you.”

She looked at him. He was not offering a medical reassurance or pretending age had no bearing on life. He was telling her what the promise would be directed towards.

“I want the possibility too,” he said. “If it happened, we’d have to change how we used our time. Both of us.”

“Yes.”

“If it didn’t, I would still want our life.”

She rested a hand on his. The statement deserved to be received without another test attached.

They went out for a walk before the next conversation. The rain had eased; the pavement smelt of wet leaves. He bought two hot drinks, remembering hers without sugar, and she watched him pay with the odd tenderness of imagining this person in years she could not see.

Back in the room she asked about prayer. Both had faith, but his practice was shaped by shared rhythms and hers by more irregular, private habits. She did not want to become somebody who performed a serenity she did not possess to avoid disappointing him.

“I will still go to Mass,” he said. “I want to keep time for prayer. I’d enjoy sharing some of that with you, but I can’t measure your faith by whether it looks like mine.”

“I might sometimes go at a different time.”

“Yes.”

“And sometimes be cross afterwards.”

“I have noticed that prayer does not eliminate your opinions.”

She laughed. “It hasn’t done much to yours either.”

They talked about sex more awkwardly. She was grateful for the awkwardness; effortless agreement would have made her suspicious that one of them was protecting the other from something.

“I don’t want marriage to turn wanting into an obligation,” she said.

“Nor do I.”

“Even when one of us is disappointed.”

“Even then.”

He took her hand. “I want to know what you like. I expect to need telling.”

“You will.”

His smile warmed her. She moved to sit beside him, the notebook left open on the table, and kissed him until the difficult conversation had a body again. He touched her face; she leaned into the touch, wanting the future and the man in front of her with an impatience that frightened her less than it once would have done.

When they parted, he rested his forehead against hers.

“I love you,” he said.

She had known it. Hearing it still changed the room.

“I love you too.”

They sat close for a while, his hand in hers, nothing urgent demanding an answer. Then Lavinia looked at the blue notebook and understood why she had been filling it with questions whose answers could never become a guarantee.

“I’m waiting to be certain I won’t disappear,” she said.

He turned towards her.

“In a marriage. I’ll start saying things don’t matter because it’s easier, and one day everything will be easy except being me.”

“I don’t want that.”

“I know. I could do it without you asking.”

He was quiet long enough for her to hear the rain begin again against the window.

“I can’t promise to notice every time,” he said. “I can promise to listen when you tell me. And to ask sometimes before the answer suits me too well.”

She smiled sadly. “That is less than I was hoping for.”

“I know.”

It was more than she had allowed herself to need before him. He could disappoint her. She could disappoint him. They could make ordinary errors that no amount of sound preliminary discussion would prevent. She thought of the tickets and the birthday, the folder he had returned, the room she had not furnished, the mornings he missed without making them her failure.

She wanted the life that contained those facts. Not an approved specimen of marriage. This one, with him.

“Will you marry me?” she asked.

He looked so startled that she almost laughed and almost took the words back. She did neither.

“I mean it,” she said. “I’m not asking because we’ve answered everything. I’m asking because I want to keep answering with you.”

He took both her hands.

“Yes, Lavinia. I will.”

She had expected relief. It arrived with a fierce, almost painful joy, the knowledge that she had made a request large enough to change her whole life and he had wanted to answer it.

He kissed her. She kissed him back with no interest in appearing composed, and when they stopped they were both laughing. He asked whether she had been planning to propose all afternoon.

“No. I thought I’d need another notebook.”

“I would have waited.”

“I know.”

That was why she no longer wanted to.

They made no calls immediately. They warmed the abandoned tea, found something to eat and sat on the floor with the notebook between them, adding questions they had missed. A place to live. A time to marry. People they wanted to tell themselves.

Under the last line of the first page, Lavinia wrote no answer at all. Then she shut the book and put it away, because there was an evening left, and she wanted to spend it with the man who had said yes.