The Low Wall

Keir kept his hand open while Blythe looked at the copper strip. The crooked amber flower stood just beyond her, lighting the underside of her wrist. He had thought, when she opened the door, that he understood what she was offering. Up close, with the glass so small and particular, he was less certain he understood anything.

“You can keep Sunday,” he said.

She looked up.

“If you close this door. Sunday is still yours.”

“I know what you meant.”

“I wanted to hear myself say it.”

Her fingers rested on the strip. The rest of the garden shone behind her, seven turns leading into blue. Somewhere in the house an ordinary clock continued its work, indifferent to light and lovers and the danger of making an occasion too large to refuse.

“If I do this,” she said, “I shall be unhappy about part of it.”

“Yes.”

“That will not mean I didn’t want you here.”

“I will try to remember.”

“Try hard.”

She knelt.

Keir watched her close the joining strip between the amber bed and the rest of the garden. The rose bells beyond it dimmed once, then steadied. She waited, checking each small connection, not hurrying because he was there.

Then she opened the strip at the front of the bed.

The amber flower changed. Not much at first. Its light loosened at the edge, becoming less a held colour than an ordinary reflection.

Blythe stood and took his offered hand.

“Bring one thread,” she said. “Come with me.”

He uncapped the coil with his free hand and let out a narrow gold line. It moved toward the flower before he guided it, answering the open light. He could still have drawn it back.

He did not.

They crossed together.

For a moment the amber was everywhere: on Blythe’s cheek, along the copper, inside the gold thread. The flower held the shape of the light one last time. Then the colour thinned, and the glass became clear.

His running thread curled around the empty stem. A turn he had carried for eleven years caught, brightened and went quiet.

Nothing broke. No sound announced what they had lost.

Blythe made a small movement toward the flower, then stopped herself.

Keir almost said he was sorry.

She looked at him before he could.

“Don’t apologise for coming where I asked you.”

He swallowed the apology.

“All right.”

She was still holding his hand. Her grip had tightened without her noticing.

“It’s strange,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I thought it would look empty. It looks like glass.”

“It is glass.”

She laughed once, shakily. “I know what I made.”

He wanted to take her away from the bed. Instead he stayed beside her while she looked.

She walked to the low wall inside the first turn. He went with her, drawing the remaining thread close so it did not reach the other beds. The copper between them and the rest remained shut.

“Here,” she said.

He stood in front of her. In the clear flower behind them, ordinary moonlight began to gather.

“This was what I wanted,” she said. “You standing here. Not a better explanation of why you shouldn’t.”

He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers.

“And now?”

She drew him toward her by the front of his coat, the same grip as the first afternoon, made new by intention.

“Now I should like you to understand the distinction.”

He kissed her.

She held him close and answered with a force that took the careful words out of his mind. Her hand tightened in his coat, then opened against his chest. He held her closer.

He drew back far enough to see her face. She followed him, impatient.

“I’m here,” he said.

“I can tell.”

“I wasn’t reassuring you.”

Her expression changed. She put her hand against his chest and let it stay there.

Behind them the last of the loose gold thread settled. He gathered it into the coil. A part of the old course was gone; another part had changed. It would take work to understand the new turn. That was tomorrow’s task.

Tonight Blythe sat on the low wall and pulled him down beside her.

He put his arm around her. She leaned into him, then turned and kissed him again because apparently she had been rationing something too long and had decided to stop.

They sat until the stone grew cold. He could see her glance toward the clear flower now and then. He let her.

· · ·Scene break

Inside, she made tea badly.

She forgot the leaves, then put in too many, then looked at the pot with such hostility that Keir took the cups out of her reach before she could blame them.

“I am usually competent,” she said.

“I’ve been told. There are tickets.”

She laughed, and then, to his alarm, her eyes filled.

He set the cups down.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” she said. “I haven’t been stabbed.”

“I wasn’t certain what face to use.”

“Your own will do.”

He came nearer but did not touch her until she reached for him. Then he held her in the kitchen, with the badly made tea cooling behind them and her face pressed against his shoulder.

“I thought I might cry,” she said into his coat. “I hoped I wouldn’t.”

“I can fetch a cloth.”

“Please. I dislike crying. It makes my nose ridiculous.”

He kissed her hair.

After a while she drew back and wiped her face with the heel of her hand. He offered a cloth. She accepted it with an expression of exhausted dignity.

“I chose it,” she said.

“I saw.”

“I want to be allowed both things.”

“Both things,” he said.

She wiped her face.

“And better tea.”

“Much better tea.”

He felt her relax against him, the damp cloth caught between their hands.

She poured the tea. It was terrible. They drank it because there was nowhere else either wanted to be.

“What did you lose?” she asked.

He looked at his coil.

“A turn I made on the west bridge. The first winter I carried the course. It had a green edge from a shop window. I can remember it. I can’t put it back as it was.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes.”

She set her cup down.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I said I wasn’t coming empty-handed.”

“People say things when they are being kissed,” she reminded him.

“I was listening then too.”

She smiled, tired and unguarded.

He had wanted her since the hand on his coat. Now he wanted to be the person who could sit with her after the decision, when there was no clever way to make loss beautiful. It was a less dazzling wish. It filled more of him.

“I should go,” he said eventually.

“Must you?”

“No.”

The word hung between them.

Blythe looked toward the stairs, then back at him. He felt the invitation she had not made yet, and the wish to hurry toward it. He also saw how much the evening had asked of her.

“I can stay on the settle,” he said. “If you want company.”

She shook her head, smiling faintly.

“You won’t fit.”

“I can be folded.”

“Not without a diagram.”

They laughed. She took his hand.

“I want you here. Tonight I want to sleep, and wake without having to make the whole garden look untouched before you see it.”

“Then I’ll stay until morning.”

“The chair opens. Tamsen insisted. I told her nobody ever stayed.”

“A visionary woman.”

They opened the chair together. It was barely longer than the settle but he declined to point this out. Blythe brought blankets and a pillow from upstairs. At the foot of the stairs she paused.

“Sunday is still mine?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She kissed him, slowly this time, without asking the kiss to justify anything.

Keir lay awake after she went up, listening to a house he did not know. The copper door clicked as the night cooled. A floorboard settled overhead. The coil sat on the table, closed and safe.

Through the garden glass he could see the amber flower, colourless now, holding a small ordinary star.

He did not mistake that for the same beauty.

He did not wish he had stayed outside.