The Small Table

Adela chose the restaurant because the tables were small, and only admitted the other reason when Oswin asked for directions.

“Past the old petrol station,” she said. “About six miles out.”

“I thought you meant the one by the harbour.”

“No. This one’s quieter.”

It was quieter. It was also a place nobody from the supper circle ever seemed to go. Both facts could be true, which was inconvenient when she wanted only one of them to explain her choice.

Friday again. In the six days since he had stayed, they had managed a walk past the allotments, a Tuesday evening at his house and an argument by message about whether biscuits could count as lunch. They had not spent every night together. Adela liked the anticipation of seeing him, the interruption to an ordinary afternoon when she remembered whose door she would knock on later.

Rhoswen had sent one message, on Wednesday. I’ve found your brown scarf. No hurry to collect.

Adela had thanked her and left the message at that. It was not forgiveness. It was a scarf in a house she still knew.

Now Oswin stood beside his car outside her flat, looking at the directions on his phone.

“I haven’t been there,” he said.

“Neither have I.”

“A recommendation?”

“I liked the window.”

He glanced up. “You’ve built a whole evening on a window.”

“There are worse foundations.”

“Chairs, for instance.”

She smiled and got in. He had cleared the passenger seat. A folded map and a packet of mints sat in the pocket of the door, and the radio came on halfway through an account of a delayed football match. He switched it off.

“You can leave it.”

“I don’t care whether they play. Do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Good. First shared sporting interest.”

They drove out of town while the shop windows were still bright. Adela liked seeing him at something ordinary: a hand on the wheel, a brief look in the mirror, the small frown when a van ahead indicated one way and turned the other. He did not perform being a good driver. She could sit beside him and look out.

At the restaurant, the window proved to be the best part. Inside, a paper lantern leaned over their table at an angle Adela could not stop noticing. There were flowers in a jar, a menu with a dish crossed out by hand, and one chair shorter than the other.

Oswin sat, sank two inches below her and looked up.

“You’ve arranged this.”

“I like to have the advantage.”

“Would you prefer a stepladder? I could address you from below.”

She tried not to laugh while the waiter handed them menus. Oswin asked whether they could exchange the chair. Nothing about it needed to be borne bravely. Another chair arrived, and he was level with her again.

“There,” he said. “We’ve survived a disagreement about furniture.”

Adela opened the menu. “There’ll be others.”

“I’m counting on it.”

They ordered water and too much food because neither understood the size of the plates. When three dishes arrived at once, Adela began moving glasses, aligning bowls, creating a workable arrangement.

Oswin held up his fork.

“Should I wait until the harbourmaster signals?”

She stopped with the water jug in her hand. “I’m making room.”

“I can see. I’m wondering if you’ll leave some for yourself.”

He said it with a smile, and she could answer without feeling diagnosed. She put the jug on his side of the table.

“There. Your responsibility.”

“Heavy office. I’ll do my best.”

He poured her water. The gesture pleased her out of proportion to its usefulness. He had made a joke, then actually done the small thing she handed over.

They talked about food they disliked, which turned out to be an excellent way of learning how little people knew about them. Oswin hated raisins hidden in savoury dishes. Adela disliked most things people called warming if that meant ginger had been added. He had never managed to enjoy olives despite repeatedly trying because they looked like something he ought to enjoy.

“Why keep eating them?”

“I don’t like being defeated by something that size.”

“You could simply stop.”

“I’m beginning to see that.”

She offered him one from a dish neither of them had ordered intentionally. He regarded it with suspicion.

“For the evidence,” she said.

He ate it, considered, and shook his head. “Still not food.”

Adela laughed so hard the waiter glanced over. She waved to show that nothing needed fixing. Oswin sat back in his corrected chair, pleased with himself.

“You have a very particular laugh,” he said.

“An unfortunate one?”

“No. You start trying to stop it, then give up. I like the giving-up part.”

She looked at him across the dishes. He did not look away or dilute it into a joke. The lantern swayed above them in the draught from the door.

“I’m doing more of that lately,” she said.

“I’ve noticed.”

There was a pause that had nothing awkward in it. She could hear cutlery, a chair moving, the kitchen door swinging behind the waiter. Oswin put his hand beside her plate, and she rested her fingers against his.

“Do you ever think about leaving Merewick?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“For travel, or for good?”

“Both. Different kinds of sometimes.”

She waited.

“When I’m tired of being recognised,” he said, “for good. Somewhere I could buy a pint without someone remembering an argument they only heard about.”

Adela’s fingers went still.

“And the other kind?”

“I’d like to go somewhere warm for two weeks and be appallingly idle. Nothing admirable. No great journey.”

“How idle?”

“Lunch could take most of the day.”

She smiled. “Ambitious.”

“You asked.”

It was the first future he had described to her that had not been an explanation of why he had disappointed Sennen. Adela let him have it without fitting herself into the empty chair opposite his imaginary lunch.

“I’d like to go somewhere nobody asks me what a fabric is,” she said.

“A place with no curtains.”

“Or people with very little curiosity.”

“That narrows it down.”

They discussed unsuitable holidays until the food was gone. He wanted a beach with no organised games. She wanted a room with a balcony large enough for breakfast. Neither wanted anyone to describe the trip as an opportunity for growth.

For the first time all week, Adela did not think of Rhoswen for almost an hour.

It was the waiter asking about pudding that brought her back. She looked at the menu, automatically checking whether there was something the older woman would have liked, then remembered who was sitting opposite her. Oswin saw the pause but did not ask for it.

She ordered the lemon tart for herself.

· · ·Scene break

Outside, the road was quiet and the restaurant’s window made a yellow square on the pavement. Oswin took her hand on the way to the car.

“Good window,” he said.

“I told you.”

“Chairs need work.”

“Don’t give them my number.”

He stopped beside the passenger door and turned towards her. Adela knew he was going to kiss her; she still felt the little drop in her stomach when he leaned close. She put her hands inside the open edges of his jacket, and he smiled against her mouth.

It was easy here. No familiar shopfronts, no neighbour coming home, no possibility of a friend asking when this had started. She could stand with him beneath a restaurant window and feel nothing but his hand warm at the back of her neck.

The ease made her pull back.

“What is it?” he asked.

She kept hold of his jacket. There was a temptation to say nothing and preserve the evening. She had learned how expensive nothing could become.

“I chose here because we wouldn’t know anyone.”

His hand moved from her neck to her shoulder. Not away, quite. Enough for her to feel him listening.

“All right.”

“I told myself it was the window. It was partly the window.”

“You don’t have to give the window a defence.”

She smiled, then lost it. “I’m not ashamed of you.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I know what it looks like.”

He took a moment. “It looks like you wanted an evening without explaining yourself. I can understand that.”

“But it could become how we do this.”

“Yes.”

Adela looked back at the bright window. Their table had been cleared; another couple sat there already, rearranging the chairs. Her ordinary life had room for this pleasure. She could not keep driving it six miles away and call the distance a preference.

“Next time, the harbour place,” she said.

“If you want to eat there.”

“I do. I’ve wanted to for months.”

“Then take me.”

There was no demand for a public kiss now, no test she could pass under a streetlight. He let her make the next plan instead of proving the last one innocent.

She brushed her thumb along his collar.

“I had a lovely evening.”

“So did I.”

“I don’t want to spoil it by understanding something about myself.”

His face softened. “You haven’t.”

He kissed her again, briefly, and opened the car door.

On the drive home, Adela put a hand on his knee while they waited at a junction. He covered it for a moment, then returned his hand to the wheel. There were habits she had not yet learned to recognise until she was halfway through them. He could be beside her while she learned. That did not make it his work to do.

At her flat, she invited him in. He said he had an early shift and should go home, and she discovered she could be disappointed without making him responsible for it.

“Sunday afternoon?” she asked.

“I’m free.”

“There’s a thing at the harbour rooms. Soup and bread, money for the roof. I said I’d go before all this.”

“Do you want me there?”

“Yes. With me.”

He looked at her long enough for the words to settle. “Then yes.”

After he drove away, she went upstairs and wrote the harbour restaurant’s number on a scrap of paper. She would book it tomorrow, at a sensible hour. A table for two, in the town where they lived.