The Ordinary Answer

“So this is the woman who brought you back to life.”

The remark was made with affection, across a table of sandwiches at the centre’s December gathering. Hugo knew the speaker meant to welcome Lavinia. He also knew, from the half-second before she smiled, that she had heard the history being taken out of him.

“I was alive before,” he said. “Rather inconveniently for a number of people.”

The man laughed, surprised. Hugo let the joke settle before adding, “I’m very happy we’re getting married. That part is new.”

Lavinia put her hand on his arm. Conversation moved to the wedding date they had begun considering, late April, and then to whether the sandwiches contained enough mustard. Nobody had been publicly corrected into humiliation. Still, Hugo found himself quiet afterwards, aware of how much he disliked an explanation that could make their lives sound so flattering and false.

He had left a community he loved. He had chosen a woman he loved. The second sentence mattered enormously. It did not repair the first into a story about a man rescued from never having lived.

Later he and Lavinia walked back through town. They had agreed to spend the evening separately: she wanted to wrap presents and he had promised to call an old friend. He was tempted to ask her to change the arrangement because the remark had unsettled him. He waited until he knew whether he wanted company or reassurance.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“Not letting me stand there as a treatment.”

He smiled. “You’d be a demanding prescription.”

“Take twice daily. Expect disagreement.”

They laughed, then she looked ahead at the shop windows.

“I liked part of it,” she said.

He turned towards her.

“The idea that I changed your life that much. It’s a lovely thing to be told, if I don’t look at what it requires of your life before me.”

“You have changed it that much.”

She stopped by the crossing. He stood beside her while the signal remained red.

“I’m not trying to make you smaller,” he said. “You aren’t a footnote to a decision I made by myself. I want to marry you. I want a home with you. That is an enormous change.”

“Just not a resurrection.”

“No.”

The signal changed. They crossed without letting go of each other’s hands.

“You changed mine too,” she said on the other side. “I wasn’t waiting to be saved from a flat I like. But I didn’t know I could ask for this much and still be myself.”

He kissed her outside her building, brief and warm because the pavement was cold and they each had an evening of their own to get to. He did not ask her to abandon the wrapping. She did not ask whether he would be lonely.

At home he called his friend and enjoyed the conversation. Afterwards he missed Lavinia without considering the feeling an emergency.

· · ·Scene break

In January they looked at three flats and rejected two for entirely unromantic reasons. One was too expensive; the other had a kitchen in which opening the oven prevented anyone from leaving. The third was near the park, with two modest bedrooms, a sitting room wide enough for their separate chairs and windows Lavinia could open without climbing onto something.

They stood in it after the viewing agent had gone into the hall to take a call.

“I could walk to work,” she said.

“And I could catch the early bus.”

“We can afford it.”

“Yes.”

There was a stain on the ceiling from an old leak, now repaired. The bathroom cabinet shut badly. It was a home within reach, which made it more frightening to choose than an impossible place they could enjoy rejecting.

“Would you want this one if I didn’t?” she asked.

“I like it. I wouldn’t want us to take it if you hated it.”

“I don’t hate it. I’m checking whether we’re both pretending.”

He looked at the narrow kitchen again. “I would change the curtains.”

“Thank God. I was beginning to think you had an undisclosed fondness for brown flowers.”

They laughed and chose the flat. The tenancy would begin a little before the wedding so they could move their things in without making the wedding day a transport operation. Until then they would keep their separate homes. The rent and deposit came from agreed contributions; no one offered a financial surprise the other would have to accept gratefully.

A week later they sat at Lavinia’s table sorting what each would bring. Hugo had fewer possessions, but this did not make him morally superior or exempt from opinions. He wanted his books near the chair where he read. Lavinia wanted the second bedroom to be a room they could each use alone, not a storage area called a spare room to make solitude sound temporary.

“A desk,” she said. “And a comfortable chair. Somewhere a person can shut the door without seeming to have left the marriage.”

“I’d like that too.”

His householder had agreed to sell him the chair and lamp for a modest sum, with an enthusiasm he considered unflattering. He had accepted; Lavinia had approved the chair and reserved judgement on the lamp.

“I do like the light,” she admitted.

“But?”

“I still find it hideous.”

“Both can be true.”

“Do you want it in the sitting room?”

He considered the photograph they had taken of the flat. “Perhaps by my reading chair.”

“Where I’ll see it every day.”

“Yes.”

She sighed extravagantly. He did not offer to give it away before she could answer. She took the photograph and drew a little circle in the corner.

“There. It will be hidden from the street. I have a civic responsibility.”

“That sounds like consent.”

“That sounds like a lamp placement. Don’t make it solemn.”

He laughed and wrote it down. Not everything needed to carry the whole history of their relationship. Sometimes two people could agree to keep an ugly object because one liked it and the other liked him more than she disliked seeing it.

· · ·Scene break

Wedding preparation occupied the winter in uneven portions. There were practical conversations with their parish, arrangements to make in good time and choices that mattered less than the amount of discussion they received. They kept the ceremony and meal modest. Both wanted the people closest to them there; neither wanted a day designed to persuade strangers that they were happy.

One evening in March, Lavinia arrived at his rooms with a list of things still undone and announced that she no longer had an opinion about flowers.

“You had a strong one last week,” he said.

“I’ve used it up.”

He took the list, found the items he had agreed to handle and showed her which were finished. One was not. He had put off calling about the meal because he disliked asking for a change.

She looked at him over the paper.

“Will you call tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I don’t want to remind you again.”

“You won’t need to.”

He made the call the next morning and told her the result. The small relief in her answer pleased him more than a speech about his reliability would have done.

As the date approached, desire became a more insistent presence in ordinary evenings. One night she sat beside him on the sofa, kissed him for a long time and then moved away with a quiet, frustrated laugh.

“I want April,” she said.

“So do I.”

He wanted to draw her back and did not until she held out her hand. She leaned against his shoulder rather than returning to the kiss.

“I’m glad we didn’t hurry it,” she said. “I can be glad and impatient.”

“You have taught me a considerable amount about combined opinions.”

She smiled. He kissed the top of her head, then they talked about the new flat until the urgency became part of an evening they could enjoy without denying it.

Two weeks before the wedding they carried their chairs into the sitting room. Hers was green, his a faded brown. They did not match. Between them there was room for a small table, and beyond them the window looked onto the street they would walk home along together.

Lavinia sat in hers, still wearing her coat, and held out her hand across the empty space.

Hugo took it. There were boxes to unpack, arrangements still capable of going wrong, a future neither had been certified fit to manage. He was not looking for such a certificate now. He was looking at the woman who had asked him to marry her, and thinking of how soon they would come home and both stay.