The Place Beside Me

Adela rang Rhoswen at half past eight while Oswin slept in her bed and a piece of lemon cake waited downstairs.

She had gone into the landing so the phone would not wake him. The floor was cold beneath her feet. For a moment she felt like a woman hiding a conversation, then remembered that privacy could be no more complicated than letting someone sleep.

Rhoswen answered on the fourth ring.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. I wondered if I could come round for a little while. About nine.”

“This morning?”

“If you’d like to see me.”

A pause. Adela looked at the closed bedroom door and waited without adding a reason Rhoswen would have to accept.

“All right,” the older woman said. “I’m up.”

When Adela went back in, Oswin had woken. He reached for her hand as she passed the bed.

“Cold feet?”

“Literally. Nothing dramatic.”

He smiled and lifted the corner of the quilt. She sat beside him long enough to warm her toes beneath it.

“She said I could come,” Adela said. “I’ll probably be back before ten. If it changes, I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll get the potatoes started at ten.”

“You don’t have to build your morning round me.”

He looked at her. “I’m choosing to make breakfast with you. It isn’t a conscription.”

She laughed, then leaned down to kiss him. He kept her hand for a moment afterwards, his thumb moving over her knuckles.

“I’d like that,” she said.

“Good. Go and get dressed before your feet become a medical concern.”

She put on the blue jumper, clean jeans and the coat that no longer had to prove anything about a walk. Downstairs, she put the cake in a bag and left the house with her own key.

· · ·Scene break

Rhoswen opened the door before she rang. She wore a cardigan with a button fastened through the wrong hole.

Adela noticed, as she always would. She did not immediately reach to fix it.

“Morning.”

“Morning. What’s that?”

“Cake. From last night. You don’t have to have it.”

Rhoswen took the bag. “I don’t object to cake on principle.”

It was almost a joke. Adela let it be almost enough.

They went into the kitchen. There was one used cup beside the sink, a plate with toast crumbs, the newspaper folded but unread. Adela had spent last night imagining Rhoswen here while the four of them ate. The room offered no way to know which part of the imagined evening had been true.

Rhoswen put the cake on the counter. “How was it?”

“We had a good evening. I missed you.”

“You needn’t say the second part.”

“It’s true. So is the first.”

Rhoswen sat down. Adela took the other chair without being offered it.

“Did you talk about her?”

“Yes. The kettle and the ruined book. Among other things.”

Rhoswen smiled despite herself. “She brought that book home. Put it on the radiator.”

“That won’t have helped.”

“It smelt of paper for a week.”

They sat with the memory, and Adela felt again how much she wanted this part of her life. Somebody who knew what happened after the story she remembered ended. Somebody who could add a radiator, an irritated complaint, the practical trace of a person she still missed.

“I’d like us to walk again,” she said.

Rhoswen looked up. “We do walk.”

“Sometimes. I mean I’d like to ask you without spending three days working out what else I can offer first.”

The older woman rubbed a mark on the table with her thumb.

“Sundays used to be easy.”

“Some of them were.”

“You’re determined not to let me remember anything kindly.”

Adela felt the sting and considered answering it. Instead she said, “I remember a lot of them kindly. I don’t want to go back to having to be there every week because neither of us knows how to ask for something different.”

Rhoswen’s hand went still.

“I thought you wanted to be there.”

“I often did. I want to see you now. That’s why I’m here.”

“Then perhaps we could start again. The two of us. Keep it the way it was when we were together.”

Adela looked at her. “What do you mean by that?”

Rhoswen did not answer immediately. She glanced towards the bag of cake, then the window.

“I want one place where it can still be about her,” she said. “Where I don’t have to learn to be pleased about him.”

The honesty was not new, but it was gentler than the conditions had been. Adela could hear the wish beneath them: a mother asking the world to leave one room alone.

“Your house can be about whatever you need,” Adela said. “And we can talk about Sennen. We always will. But I can’t promise that Oswin disappears from everything I say when I’m with you.”

Rhoswen closed her eyes for a moment. “I knew you’d say that.”

“Then you know where I am.”

She said it without challenge. She was still here, at the same table, wearing the jumper Sennen had given her. There had been no abandonment. There had been a limit, which could feel like one to the person who wanted more.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel differently,” Rhoswen said.

“I don’t know either.”

“You’re supposed to tell me I will.”

Adela smiled sadly. “I’ve spent too long telling people things I can’t know.”

Rhoswen looked at her for a while. Then she reached for the bag, took out the cake and examined the foil.

“You’ve wrapped this very thoroughly.”

“Oswin did. I was clearing the table.”

The name stayed in the room. Adela did not apologise for it or search Rhoswen’s face for a reward.

Rhoswen folded back the foil. Cut a small piece with the knife by the breadboard and tasted it.

“That’s good.”

“Thank you.”

“Did it fall over?”

Adela laughed. “Nearly. I called it architecture.”

Rhoswen smiled, a real smile this time, brief enough not to promise anything beyond itself.

“Thursday,” she said.

Adela waited.

“I could walk on Thursday. In the morning. If you’re not working.”

“Half past ten? I’ve got a collection at one.”

“Half past ten, then.”

“Without the condition?”

Rhoswen looked at the cake, then at her. “I can’t promise to be very good company.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

“No. You didn’t.” She took a breath. “Without the condition.”

Adela felt relief, but it did not come with certainty. Thursday might be awkward. They might lose the path of a conversation again and have to find it. Rhoswen had agreed to a walk, not to become somebody whose daughter had not died or whose feelings could be instructed into tidiness.

It was enough to write in the diary.

When Adela stood to go, Rhoswen touched the blue sleeve.

“That repair’s still terrible.”

“I’m not changing it.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

They hugged at the door. This time Rhoswen’s arms closed around her without hesitation, and Adela held her for as long as they both wanted, then stepped back.

“Your cardigan,” she said, pointing.

Rhoswen looked down. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought we had other things to do.”

Rhoswen shook her head and began undoing the wrong button. Adela smiled, said goodbye and left her to it.

· · ·Scene break

She reached home at ten past ten. Through the kitchen window she could see Oswin moving a pan on the stove. Her table stood beyond him, two plates set beside each other rather than opposite, because the light fell better at that end in the morning.

She let herself in.

“It’s me.”

“Excellent. I’ve made an unreasonable quantity of potatoes.”

The house smelled of butter and toast. Adela took off her coat and went into the kitchen. Oswin turned towards her with a spatula in his hand.

“Good morning,” he said.

She went into his free arm and kissed him. A long kiss, until he put the spatula down because he wanted both hands and she wanted them too.

“Good morning,” she said when she could.

He looked at her, smiling. “How was it?”

“We’re walking on Thursday. No conditions. No miraculous change of heart either.”

“How do you feel?”

“Glad I went. Glad I came home. Hungry.”

“That last one I can help with.”

He turned back to the stove. Adela took the cups from the cupboard, filled them and put them beside the plates. Then she stood with her hand on the back of her chair.

“I want something,” she said.

Oswin looked over his shoulder. “Tell me.”

“This winter. I want Sundays with you. Not because I have a space in the diary now. Because I like waking up with you and having hours before either of us has to go anywhere.”

He turned off the heat.

“Not every single Sunday if you’ve got work,” she added. “And not if we want to do something separately. But I’d like us to plan for them. I don’t want the time I most want to keep being whatever’s left.”

He set the pan on a mat and came towards her.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.”

She smiled, and felt it in her whole body, the pleasure of asking for a life rather than arranging one around everyone else’s needs.

“I want something too,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“Two weeks next summer. Somewhere warm. A balcony big enough for breakfast, since you’ve established requirements. No work, no calling it an opportunity for growth. Just a holiday with you.”

She remembered the restaurant six miles out of town, the imaginary lunch he had allowed to take most of a day. The future he had spoken about before either of them knew how to include the other in it.

“June?” she said.

“June would be good.”

“We should both check the dates before we book.”

“I assumed you’d insist on that reckless level of planning.”

Adela laughed. “Yes. I’d like two weeks with you. And the Sundays before them.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her, warmly, with the kind of certainty that had room for every choice they still had to make. She put her arms around him. Felt the familiar steadiness of his body and the entirely unfaded pleasure of being wanted by this particular man.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you.”

He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, then glanced at the table.

“Breakfast is going cold.”

“We should sit down.”

“An excellent idea.”

They ate with the calendar open beyond the butter dish, pencilling in the first three Sundays and arguing gently about how far two people should be expected to walk before lunch. Adela had the blue glass. Oswin reached for another piece of toast without asking whether anybody else needed it first.

Outside, the street went about its ordinary Sunday. There were people who would be pleased for them, people who would need more time and people who would never understand. Inside, he cut the last potato in half and put one piece on her plate.

Adela took his hand beneath the table. She had nothing to mend, no guest to settle, no promise she was making for somebody else.

She kept his hand, and ate her breakfast while it was hot.