The Folded Cloth

Adela put the iron down when Rhoswen said December.

“December what?”

“The first Saturday. Unless you’d rather do the second. I thought the first would be easier before everyone starts going away.”

The tablecloth lay across Adela’s kitchen table, one half smooth, the other falling in damp creases towards the floor. She had rung to arrange returning it. Rhoswen had answered with the pleased urgency of someone who had solved a problem on both their behalf.

“What are we doing on the first Saturday?”

“Supper. Here—well, at yours. The same people. Once a month through the winter.”

Adela looked at the iron. She had unplugged it without noticing.

“I haven’t said I can do that.”

There was a pause at the other end. A door closing, perhaps. Rhoswen took phone calls while moving around her house, a habit that made every conversation sound as though Adela had caught her on the way to something more important.

“You said anything I needed. After the first supper.”

Three years ago. Rhoswen at the sink, crying because she could not remember the name of a woman Sennen used to work with. Adela had stood beside her with a wet dishcloth in her hand and meant it. Anything. She would have promised to keep the lights on all winter if darkness had been what hurt.

“I did,” she said.

“Saturday was so good. I kept thinking how long it is until we do it again.”

“I know.”

“The winter evenings are worse. People think they can ring in the morning, but it’s not the mornings—“

“I know, Rhoswen. I can’t host every month.”

This silence was unmistakable. Adela watched a drop of water slide from the iron’s sole onto its stand.

“Not every month of the year. Only until spring.”

“I understand. I can’t agree to it.”

She hated the firmness in her own voice, the way it sounded like a rule about delivery charges. She could put dates in the diary, buy food, send reminders. Those were things she knew how to do. Sitting here while Rhoswen absorbed a refusal was not.

“I’ve already mentioned it to the others.”

“You’ll have to tell them you hadn’t asked me.”

The sentence seemed harsher after it was spoken. Adela closed her eyes. She almost softened it with an offer to make the October supper, and November if nobody else could.

“I see,” Rhoswen said.

“I haven’t said I don’t want to see you.”

“No. I heard what you said.”

Adela opened her eyes. The cloth had a little darn near one corner, greenish thread against white. Rhoswen had mended it years before Sennen died. The first time Adela borrowed it, she’d pointed out the darn as if it mattered more than the loan.

“There is something else I want to talk to you about,” Adela said.

“Something else I got wrong?”

“No.”

It was too quick. There were ways of saying Oswin’s name that would make him sound like evidence in this argument, and she did not want any of them.

Rhoswen sighed. “I’m sorry. That was unfair. I thought I was arranging something we’d both want.”

“I did want Saturday.”

“Yes. Well. So did I.”

They stayed on the line a moment longer. Adela could hear the soft tick of a clock she knew, the one above Rhoswen’s cooker. She had spent whole Sundays beneath it. That history did not disappear because the woman on the other end had asked for too much.

“Can I bring the cloth back tomorrow morning?”

“You needn’t make a special journey.”

“I want to come. About ten?”

“All right.”

After they rang off, Adela finished the ironing. Not because a smooth cloth would buy her a better hearing, though the thought occurred to her. Because she had borrowed something and wanted to return it clean.

She folded it along its old lines. The repaired corner went inside. She unfolded it again and left the corner showing. Then she laughed once, without pleasure, at the amount of meaning she could force into a piece of linen when she was afraid to say a man’s name.

· · ·Scene break

Oswin came at half past seven with tomatoes from a friend who had grown too many. Adela had invited him by message after the phone call: Supper here, if you’re free. I want to see you. The other conversation is tomorrow.

He had answered yes without asking what she meant by the other conversation. Now he held out the bag as if it were a perfectly normal gift between people who were trying to work out how to have a life together.

“Some of them are an odd shape.”

“So are some of my friends.”

“Should they be offended?”

“Depends whether they taste better with salt.”

He looked at her, and she laughed properly this time. She had needed to hear her own voice doing something other than refusing a woman she loved.

She let him in and kissed him in the hall. He set the tomatoes on the floor before putting his arms around her, a practical delay she found absurdly endearing.

“Hello to you too,” he said against her hair.

“I’ve had a long afternoon.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“After we’ve eaten.”

“Good. I’m hungry.”

They made omelettes because she had eggs and had spent her shopping time ironing. Oswin cut the tomatoes; she watched him salt his before tasting them and objected on behalf of the tomatoes. He held out a slice for her. She took it from his fingers, meeting his eyes as she did, and saw him lose the sentence he had been about to say.

“Well?” she asked.

“It was going to be a very good argument.”

“Shame.”

Her kitchen had held six people eating in Sennen’s company less than a week ago. Now there were two plates, no special glasses, no plans for pudding. Adela had left the dining table small, its extra leaf stacked against the wall. The empty space around it was pleasant.

Over supper she told him what Rhoswen had arranged. He listened without interrupting.

“What did you say?”

“That I couldn’t. Twice. Then that she’d have to tell people she hadn’t asked me.”

He nodded.

“You can say that sounded unkind.”

“Did you want to host them every month?”

“No.”

“Then it sounded inconvenient. For her.”

Adela looked down at the last piece of omelette on her plate. “She’s lonely.”

“I know.”

“I’m lonely too, sometimes. I don’t want to turn her into a problem I have to solve before I can kiss you.”

“Neither do I.”

She looked at him. “What are you expecting tomorrow?”

He took time over it. She found she could tolerate his pauses better than the useful things other people said immediately.

“That you tell her what you choose to tell her. That you tell me afterwards what it means for us.”

“She might ask me not to see you.”

“Yes.”

“You aren’t going to tell me she won’t?”

“I don’t know that she won’t.”

She wanted the comfort of a man who could promise everybody would behave well, and wanted this one more. Oswin put his hand on the table, palm up. She placed hers in it.

“If you’re not ready, tell me,” he said. “I’d rather hear it from you than keep guessing.”

“I’m ready to see her. I don’t know whether I’m ready for what she says.”

His thumb moved once over her knuckle. “I can understand that.”

They left the plates until later.

On the sofa, Adela sat facing him with her feet beneath her and decided she would not spend the whole evening explaining her fear. She took his hand and kissed the little rough place at the base of his thumb where the splinter had been.

“Does it still hurt?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She held his gaze and kissed his palm. He watched her with an attention so complete that she felt herself stop performing even this, stop trying to make the gesture graceful, and simply want the man whose hand she held.

“Come here,” she said.

He moved towards her. The first kiss was slow, almost questioning, until she answered with her hand at his neck. Then his arm tightened around her and the room became wonderfully difficult to attend to.

Adela felt the sofa beneath her knee, his shirt beneath her fingers, the warmth of his mouth when he kissed the corner of hers and waited for her to turn back. She did. More than once. She liked having to find him again. Liked the slight disorder they made of each other, his collar caught under her hand, her hair falling between them until he moved it away.

“I’ve thought about this all day,” he said.

“In the engine room?”

“Especially there. It was a difficult day for machinery.”

Her laugh ended against his mouth. She leaned into him, and he gathered her closer, one hand at her back and the other holding hers against his chest. Beneath her fingers, his heart was beating as hard as her own.

There was nothing aloof about him now. None of the readiness to take up his chair and make leaving simple. He wanted to be here. He was letting her feel it.

She pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. Felt his breath change; felt his fingers still against her blouse.

“Adela.”

She looked at him. He was not warning her. Her name sounded like something he had wanted to say that way for a long time and only now could.

“I know,” she said, though he had asked nothing.

He smiled, a little helplessly. “Good. Saves me finding a sentence.”

She kissed him again. For several minutes she let there be nothing to decide. She was an adult woman on her own sofa with a man who listened when she spoke and made her forget the sentence she had been preparing. She was allowed to enjoy him. The permission mattered most when it came without an imagined voice agreeing.

When his hand moved to the hem of her blouse, he paused. She covered it with hers. Not pushing him away. Holding it where it was while she came back to herself.

“Wait.”

He stopped at once. Drew his head back, leaving his hand still beneath hers.

“All right.”

She breathed, looking at the button near his throat.

“I want more than this.”

“So do I.”

“But not tonight. I meant what I said yesterday.”

“Then not tonight.”

There was no injured note she had to soothe. He moved his hand when she released it, settling it over her fingers instead. Adela rested against him and let the wanting remain. It did not turn into shame merely because she had stopped.

“Can we stay here a little longer?” she asked.

“Yes.”

He kissed her forehead, then leaned back with her against his shoulder. The clock above the kitchen door ticked. Outside, somebody called goodnight across the street. Her life continued to make ordinary noises around an extraordinary amount of happiness.

After a while he said, “I should go before I start arguing with my own good sense.”

“You can go without making a joke of wanting to stay.”

He turned his head. She had surprised him.

“I want to stay,” he said.

“I want you to.”

They sat with that for another minute. Then she stood and held out her hand to him.

He helped wash the plates. At the door, they arranged to speak after she had seen Rhoswen, and he told her he was free on Saturday evening if she wanted company. He did not call it a reward. She did not promise an outcome.

“I’ll see her tomorrow,” she said.

“I know.”

She kissed him goodbye and watched him walk away with his jacket over one shoulder. This time there was no chair to carry, no visible explanation for his visit that she could put between him and the street.

Inside, the folded cloth waited on the hall table. She put her keys beside it.

She could still make tomorrow a conversation about suppers. It would be a true conversation, a necessary one. She could ask for her Saturdays back, arrange a different way to see Rhoswen, and ring Oswin afterwards to say she needed more time. He would hear her. She believed that now.

Or she could tell Rhoswen whose company she wanted in the hours she was reclaiming.

Adela turned out the hall light. In the dark, she could still feel where his hand had rested against her back. Having a choice had never felt less like being let off.