The Table

Adela put four glasses on the table and did not go back for a fifth.

The blue one stood beside her plate. There was a shallow chip in one of the ordinary glasses, so she exchanged that one and checked the rest, allowing herself practical fussing where it had a purpose.

From the kitchen, Oswin said, “Do these potatoes have a preferred arrangement?”

“In the tray.”

“I’ve achieved that much.”

She went to look. He had cut them larger than she would have, leaving the skins on. They would be good. They would take longer. Dinner was at seven, and nobody would be endangered by eating at half past.

“They’re fine,” she said.

“You looked as though you had a comment.”

“I’ve retired it.”

He smiled and put the tray in the oven.

They had divided the cooking because they both wanted to eat and neither wanted Adela to spend the whole afternoon working. He had made the potatoes and a dressing; she had cooked the chicken and a lemon cake. The cake leaned. She had left it leaning.

There were no pears in the house. That was not a declaration against pears. She had simply bought what she wanted.

At quarter to seven she checked her phone. No message from Rhoswen. She had not expected one, except for the part of her that had been expecting it all day.

Oswin came to stand beside her.

“How are you?”

“Waiting for her to change her mind. Trying not to.”

“You can want her here.”

“I do.”

He touched her back. She leaned into his hand for a moment, then put the phone in the drawer where she kept it when she wanted to be present for something else.

“Ask me about the cake,” she said.

He looked at it. “Is the slope intentional?”

“Completely. An architectural feature.”

“Good. I didn’t want to insult the architect.”

She laughed. He kissed her, a brief, flourless kitchen kiss that needed no crisis to justify it.

The doorbell rang at seven.

The first guest was the woman who had fetched the gravy at last year’s supper. She carried nothing and looked apologetic about it.

“You said not to bring anything.”

“I meant it. Come in.”

The woman took off her coat and looked towards the dining room. Adela saw the counting begin, the glance towards the place where the blue glass used to stand. She did not explain before being asked.

“It’s lovely in here,” the woman said.

“Less crowded.”

“Yes.”

They went into the kitchen, where Oswin offered her something to drink. She accepted water and asked whether he had cooked. He pointed at the potatoes as if submitting evidence of a modest crime.

The second guest arrived five minutes later, the man who had asked about fetching Sennen from the station. He brought a jar of mustard because he had already bought it before reading the invitation properly. Adela thanked him and put it on the table without finding an immediate use for it.

Four people. Four chairs. A room large enough for conversation without anyone having to lean around an absence.

When they sat down, Oswin took the place beside Adela. Not the borrowed cord chair, not a seat she had offered him to correct an old wrong. One of her own dining chairs, the screw tightened earlier that week. He sat because that was where he wanted to be, and she sat before all the serving dishes had arrived.

“There’s dressing in the kitchen,” she said.

“I’ll get it,” Oswin said.

She let him. The woman opposite began telling her about a builder who had arrived a month late and seemed surprised they still wanted the work done. By the time Oswin came back, Adela was laughing, and the conversation had started without being arranged.

They ate. The potatoes were very good. Adela said so, and Oswin accepted the compliment without explaining who had chosen them or whose kitchen had made them possible.

There was a difficult minute when the man asked whether Rhoswen was away. Adela put down her fork.

“No. She didn’t feel she could come tonight.”

“Oh.”

He looked towards Oswin and then away. Adela could feel the moment waiting for her to turn it into an explanation that would tell everyone where to put their sympathy.

“I miss her being here,” she said. “Would you pass the beans?”

The man passed them. It was not an elegant recovery. The next sentence, about traffic near the station, was too brisk. They all heard it and allowed the conversation to find its pace again.

Oswin’s knee touched hers beneath the table. She rested her hand briefly on it, then reached for the water jug.

They were not proving an evening could be painless. They were having the one available to them.

After a while the woman opposite asked whether Adela still took work from the hotel on the hill. A pair of curtains led to an account of a room somebody had painted yellow despite every sample looking green, and from there the man mentioned a holiday apartment with a kettle that could only be plugged in beside the bed.

Adela began laughing before she could explain why.

“Sennen did that,” she said. “Boiled a kettle on a bedside table and steamed every page of the book she’d left above it. Then complained that the novel had become too thick to finish.”

The others laughed. Oswin looked at her with recognition.

“She put it under a suitcase,” he said.

“For two days.”

“Then asked why the suitcase wouldn’t close.”

Adela shook her head, smiling. She could see Sennen kneeling on the lid, furious with a perfectly innocent piece of luggage. She had been on that trip with both of them, all of them grown and employed and supposedly capable of living indoors without causing damage.

“She told me it was a defect in the binding,” the woman said.

“Of course she did,” Adela said. “She could make a manufacturing fault out of anything.”

The memory hurt and delighted her in the same breath. She did not have to choose which it was before speaking.

Then she turned to Oswin.

“Will you pass the potatoes?”

He did. She took another piece and went on eating.

· · ·Scene break

The cake was good in spite of its angle. Nobody sang, made a toast or asked each person for a memory. They spoke about Sennen twice more because someone remembered something, and also about a book the woman was reading, the price of a train ticket and whether Oswin really disliked every olive he had ever eaten.

“Every one,” he said.

“That’s quite a commitment.”

“I’m a thorough man.”

Adela laughed into her glass. The blue glass. It had held water all evening, leaving a ring on the table she would wipe away later.

She did not feel brave using it. It was pleasant in her hand. She wished she had done it sooner and knew wishing would not change when she had been able to.

At half past ten the guests began making the movements people made before standing: checking the time without admitting it, setting down a cup they had already emptied. Adela did not offer more tea to prove they need not leave.

The woman hugged her in the hall.

“Thank you. I enjoyed tonight.”

“So did I.”

“We should have you both at ours.”

Adela looked at her. Not because the invitation was extraordinary; because both had arrived without a correction, a pause or a glance towards anybody else.

“We’d like that,” she said.

She looked back at Oswin. He nodded.

The man remembered his jar of mustard and said they should keep it. Oswin thanked him solemnly for the contribution to future sandwiches. They all laughed at the door, and then the guests were gone.

Adela closed it and stood for a moment with her hand on the latch, remembering another Saturday a year earlier, a borrowed chair departing into the wet street.

Oswin was behind her now, still inside.

“All right?” he asked.

“Mostly.”

He put his arms around her when she leaned back towards him. She rested there, eyes closed, listening to their guests’ car start outside.

“I wanted her to have some cake,” she said.

“We can save a piece.”

“She might not want it.”

“We can still save it.”

Adela turned and put her face against his shoulder. There were tears, but only a few. She did not need them to become proof that she had not enjoyed the evening too much.

“You don’t have to make this easier,” she said.

“I was offering a plate and some foil. That’s all I’ve got.”

She laughed against him.

They cleared the table together. He wrapped the piece of cake; she put the leftovers in the fridge. The blue glass went into the washing-up bowl with the others. Adela dried it and set it upside down on the rack.

Four used plates. No untouched fork. She could see the change and feel its cost without undoing it.

Before going upstairs, she took her phone from the drawer. Still no message. She put it on the shelf, face down, and turned towards Oswin.

“What would you like for breakfast?”

“What’s available?”

“Eggs. Toast. An unreasonable quantity of potatoes.”

“Then we appear to have everything.”

“I’d like to go to Rhoswen’s first. If she wants to see me. Just for a little while.”

He nodded. “Tell me when you know what time. I’ll start after that.”

“You don’t have to wait all morning.”

“I won’t. I’ll have toast if I get hungry. Then we can eat together when you come back.”

The answer held his own appetite and room for hers. Adela loved him so sharply in that moment she went back across the kitchen to kiss him.

He met her halfway. For once neither of them had anything more to explain.