The Other Room

Oswin’s work bag was on the kitchen table when Adela arrived on Saturday, with a printed rota beside it.

She put the bread she had brought on the counter and kissed him. He kissed her back, one hand warm against her cheek, and for a moment she thought Thursday’s difficulty had become smaller while they were apart.

Then he moved the rota beneath the bag.

“What are you arranging?” she asked.

“Cover. A mechanic at the yard down the coast needs Friday afternoon off. They asked if I could stay through Saturday.”

“Next Friday?”

“Yes.”

Sennen’s birthday. Rhoswen’s lunch. A whole evening and following day conveniently cleared of the man she might otherwise have to go home to.

Adela took off her coat slowly. “Have you said yes?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you want the work?”

“It’s paid. I know the equipment.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

He looked at her. The kitchen felt too familiar for the distance that had opened in it: her tea on the shelf, the mug he bought after she said the old one got too hot to hold, the fourth chair beneath the window.

“I thought you might prefer not to have to worry about me that day,” he said.

“I’m going to lunch, Oswin. I’m not evacuating the town.”

“I know that.”

“Then why would I prefer it?”

He picked up the bag and set it on the floor. The rota remained on the table, exposed between them.

“Because whatever happens there, you’ll feel you ought to come back and make it all right for me. I don’t want that.”

“Neither do I. But you’re arranging where I come back to before I’ve decided.”

He looked down. “It was an offer of work.”

“Then take it because you want it. Don’t tell me you’ve decided what will be easier for me.”

Her voice had risen. She heard it and stopped. Oswin’s face closed, not angrily, but in the way a door closed when someone was trying to keep out cold air.

He went into the front room. Adela stayed beside the table for a moment, looking at the empty doorway, then followed.

“Are we stopping?” she asked.

He turned. “No. I wanted to sit down. I should have said.”

She sat in the armchair. He took the sofa. The space between them seemed intentional, though neither had arranged it that way.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.

“Lunch?”

“Being with you while part of your life is a place I can’t go.”

Adela folded her hands to keep from reaching for a cushion and doing something pointless to its seam.

“There are parts of your life I don’t go to.”

“That’s different.”

“Some of it is. Some of it isn’t.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I don’t expect to come everywhere. I know she doesn’t want me at her daughter’s birthday lunch. I’m not saying she has to.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That when she says leave him out, I hear all the other times people thought it was better if I wasn’t there. And now you’re the one making it reasonable.”

Adela felt the accusation land, sharpened by how close it came to her own fear.

“I told her I wouldn’t keep you out of every conversation.”

“I know what you told her.”

“Then believe me.”

“I’m trying.”

“You sound as if I have to earn it again every time I want to see someone who doesn’t like this.”

He sat back. For a few seconds he looked as though he might deny it. Then he rubbed a hand over his face.

“Perhaps I do sound like that.”

The admission did not end the argument. Adela was still hurt. He was still looking at a part of her life in which his absence made things easier, and knowing she intended to enter it.

“I won’t stop loving her to show you how much I want you,” Adela said.

Oswin looked up sharply. “I haven’t asked you to.”

“I know. But I need to know you won’t treat me going there as the beginning of choosing against you.”

“I need to know I haven’t become something you can leave at home whenever the room gets difficult.”

There they were. Two needs neither could dismiss without giving up something real. Adela could see, with an unwelcome clarity, how readily her life might become a series of explanations to one person about why she had chosen another.

She did not want to live that way. She did not want to leave him either.

“I asked you to come to the harbour rooms,” she said. “I booked the restaurant. I’m not hiding you.”

“I know.”

“Those things happened. They don’t vanish because I’m having one lunch.”

“You’re right.”

His voice was flat with the effort of meaning it. She had wanted him to agree, and found agreement was not the same as feeling understood.

“I was there when she died,” Adela said. “Not in the room at the end. I mean the whole of that year. Rhoswen and me, working out what to take to appointments, what Sennen might eat, who could stay when the other one had to go. We were there together. It made something between us. I can’t explain it as a Sunday habit I ought to break.”

Oswin listened without moving. She had never told him the ordinary detail of that year. He knew the dates. Dates were a thin account of how people became necessary to each other.

“I don’t want you to break it,” he said.

“I know you don’t want to be that man. I’m asking whether you can bear what it means in practice.”

He looked towards the window. Rain had begun, faintly, without either of them noticing. A car went past with its wipers squeaking.

“I don’t know yet,” he said.

Adela’s throat tightened. She had asked for an honest answer and could not complain that he had given her one.

“All right.”

“I want to be able to.”

“That matters. It doesn’t settle it.”

“No.”

They sat with the rain. She could remember Thursday in September, on this sofa, discovering that his account of the breakup would not excuse her feelings. Now his fear could not excuse everything he did with it. Her tenderness for him remained. So did her anger.

“I was relieved she asked,” Adela said after a while. “So relieved I wanted you to be pleased for me immediately. I asked if it was all right, and I didn’t really leave you room to say it hurt.”

“It did hurt.”

“I can hear that. I don’t want it to change whether I go.”

He nodded. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

“No.”

This time the agreement reached a little further.

Oswin stood and went to the kitchen. He came back with the rota, folded it once and set it on the radio.

“I won’t answer that while we’re arguing.”

“Thank you.”

“Not because you get to decide whether I work. Because I haven’t worked out why I’d be saying yes.”

Adela nodded. She was glad he had made the distinction himself.

They made sandwiches because it was past one and neither had eaten. The bread she had brought was still on the counter, an innocent object with a job it could accomplish. He sliced it; she found plates. They did not pretend that sharing lunch had repaired them.

Afterwards Adela washed her plate and his, partly because she had used one, partly because she wanted a minute with her hands under warm water.

“Would you like me to stay this afternoon?” she asked when she turned off the tap.

“Yes,” he said. Then, “Would you like to?”

She thought of sitting together trying to make the silence feel normal, each too alert to the other to read a book or enjoy a film.

“I think I’d like to go home.”

He looked disappointed. He did not conceal it quickly enough to spare her, and she was glad of that even while it hurt.

“All right.”

“Not because I want to frighten you. I need to stop trying to make this afternoon good.”

“I understand.”

He gave her coat back. At the door she took his hand.

“Can we walk tomorrow? Somewhere we can keep moving while we talk.”

“Yes. Ten?”

Sunday at ten. The old hour, offered without calculation. Adela felt the coincidence and let it remain one.

“Ten. I’ll come here.”

They kissed goodbye. It was a sadder kiss than either wanted, still wanted, still theirs. She could feel his hand tighten once around her fingers before he let her go.

At home, Adela did not ring Rhoswen to discuss the argument. She could imagine how easily it would become evidence in a case neither woman needed to make. She did not ring a friend to acquire a verdict about Oswin either.

She sat at her own table and wrote down what she wanted to say tomorrow, not what would make him agree. Three sentences, crossed out twice. Then she put the paper away and made herself an ordinary cup of tea.

The afternoon was not good. It was bearable. For once she let that be enough until morning.