The Long Bench

Keir knew something had happened because Blythe let him knock twice.

Usually she opened before he finished the first knock, then pretended she had been passing the door. Tonight she came slowly, without a ribbon in her hair.

“I withdrew,” she said.

He took in her face before answering.

“From the conservatory.”

“Yes.”

He had imagined this moment, foolishly. In his imagination she had looked relieved, and he had known the right thing to do with his hands.

Now she looked exhausted. He kept his hands at his sides until she reached for his coat.

“Come in,” she said. “I don’t want to tell it in the doorway.”

He followed her into the kitchen. The clear vessel stood on the table, empty. Beside it, an ugly glass stem leaned at an angle that made him like it.

Blythe told him about the trial amber, the offer, the platform boards going through the side door. She spoke without crying. He found himself wishing she would, because he knew how to hold her through tears and did not know how to bear the dry steadiness of this disappointment.

“You can say something,” she said at last.

“I don’t know what would help.”

“Probably nothing. Say something true.”

He looked at the vessel.

“I wanted you to have that room. More than I knew how to say before.”

She sat down.

“Thank you.”

He sat opposite her. For a while they said nothing.

Then her stomach made a loud, indignant sound.

Blythe stared at the table.

“I had hoped to be dignified a little longer.”

“It has been a difficult day for dignity.”

“I haven’t bought food.”

“I have bread and cheese. At home.”

“That is less immediately useful than I hoped.”

He stood. “I’ll fetch them.”

“Stay. There are eggs. I am only pretending I can’t cook them because then somebody might have to take responsibility for me.”

He laughed. She looked pleased to have made him.

They cooked together, badly organised but effective. She broke an egg into the wrong bowl. He burned one side of the bread. They ate all of it, and the meal did not make her glad she had withdrawn. It made the evening bearable enough to continue.

Afterward she asked him to come into the garden.

They sat on the long bench beyond the first bed, his coil capped, her remaining circuit already tended. The new amber flower stood separately in its small ring. Its new brown-gold colour was good. He said so.

“I know,” she said. “That was inconvenient.”

“You can keep it.”

“I intend to. I don’t have to reject every beautiful thing Nerida likes.”

He smiled, relieved by the irritation in her voice. It sounded like her coming back into the room.

She moved closer on the bench.

“I am angry with you a little,” she said.

His stomach tightened.

“About the lie?”

“No. About the fact that if I had never met you I might still be able to want one thing without examining the others.”

He let that stand between them.

Then she touched his knee.

“I know it isn’t fair. I don’t want to keep it secret and let it become more impressive than it is.”

“I have been angry with you for making my empty house noticeable.”

She looked at him.

“That seems equally unfair.”

“I thought so.”

They laughed, not quite happily, but together.

Blythe rested her head against his shoulder. Above the wall, the sky had cleared. Ordinary stars shone over her preserved blue hour. He could see why she had spent so much of her life here. He could also see the little drawing on the kitchen table through the window, asking for a different kind of attention.

“What do you want now?” he asked.

“Tonight?”

“Tonight is enough.”

She turned her face toward him.

“You. Without having to make a fine account of the day first.”

He kissed her gently. She answered, then drew back.

“Less as though I’m breakable.”

He met her eyes. “Show me.”

She stood and took his hand, pulling him up from the bench. Then she kissed him with the certainty he had been trying to protect out of her. Her hands held his coat; his found her waist. He felt her lean into him, impatient with the distance he had left, and let himself want her without turning it into consolation.

The garden light lay across her face. Rose on one cheek, blue along the edge of her hair. She closed her eyes when he kissed her again, and opened them as he drew back, as if she wanted to see him wanting her.

“There,” she said softly.

“There?”

“That’s you.”

He laughed once, unsteadily. “I’ve been here all evening.”

“I know.”

Her thumb moved along his jaw. The touch was small, unhurried. It made him forget the clever reply he had been preparing.

She smiled at that, and he saw pleasure return to her face without erasing the tiredness.

They went inside together.

At the foot of the stairs she stopped to close the garden door. A practical movement, familiar and necessary. Then she turned back to him, took the capped coil from his wrist with his help, and set it safely on the hall table.

“Heavy tonight?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She pressed her mouth to the pale place it had left, a brief tenderness that made his throat tighten.

“Come upstairs.”

He followed.

In her room the lamp had been turned low. She unpinned her hair and handed him the pins one by one, trusting him to keep them without dropping them into some impossible gap. He put them in a dish and came back to her.

For a moment she stood still, looking at him with none of the brisk competence she could summon for a visitor. He understood that she was letting him see the day on her: the disappointment, the fatigue, the desire that had persisted through both.

“I don’t want to be somewhere else,” he told her.

She reached for him.

She took his hand and pressed it between hers. Her fingers were cold from the garden.

“You needn’t look so worried,” she said.

“I was wondering whether you wanted the lamp lower.”

“I want you to kiss me. The lamp can recover from being overlooked.”

He laughed and bent toward her. She met him halfway, then drew him nearer by the repaired sleeve. He felt her smile when his hand settled at her back. The tiredness had not left her face, but her mouth was warm and certain against his, and she was no longer waiting for him to guess how fragile he ought to think her.

When they parted she rested her forehead against his shoulder. He held her, his cheek against her hair. Her hands loosened, then moved around him, holding him in return.

“I was afraid I would come home tonight and find I had made myself impossible to live with,” she said.

“There are eggshells in the wrong bowl. We can survive those.”

Her laugh shook against him. He kissed her temple and felt her lift her face again, asking without having to become solemn. He answered, and she came close enough that the last of the day’s careful distance disappeared between them.

Later the lamp burned lower. She lay close, her hand resting over his heart, and he could feel how little of the night had been about forgetting. She was still the woman who had passed the conservatory door and hurt. He was still the man who had come without knowing how to help. They had found something they could give each other that did not pretend to solve it.

“The fourth stem,” she said after a long time.

“Yes?”

“Tomorrow I shall make it wider at the base.”

“A sound beginning.”

“Don’t sound so approving. It might be hideous.”

“I will admire it selectively.”

She laughed against his shoulder.

He held her while she slept. He did not make a promise over her sleeping head or decide what they would do next. In the morning he would ask whether she wanted breakfast, and she would almost certainly have an opinion about the bread.

For tonight it was enough that she had reached for him and that he had stopped trying to turn being wanted into an occasion he had to manage perfectly.