The Yellow Bowl

Delilah bought the ugly bowl because Ash tried so hard not to tell her it was ugly.

He stood beside the market stall with his hands in his pockets, watching her turn it toward the light. The glaze was a disagreeable yellow. Somebody had painted four leaves around the rim, none attached to a convincing stem.

“You think I should put it down,” she said.

“I think you should buy something you like.”

“An evasive answer.”

“I’ve been practising.”

She put the bowl back. “Tell me.”

“It looks as if it has received disappointing news.”

She laughed so hard the stallholder looked up from his newspaper. Ash’s expression broke. It had been worth making him say it simply to see the pleasure arrive afterwards.

“I’ll take it,” she told the stallholder.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” Ash said.

“I want to have breakfast out of something that looks worse than I do.”

He carried it while she paid, cradling the bowl with a care entirely out of proportion to its price. It was Sunday, and they had started with the market because neither had been before. They had no reservation for lunch. Delilah had put her work phone in a drawer at home and told the people who might need her when she would next be available. There was nothing negligent about the day. She had checked that rather more often than necessary.

They walked past secondhand coats, a table of bent spoons and a man selling excellent-looking oranges from boxes which had once held something else. Ash chose two. She liked watching him make a small choice without collecting all the available fruit first.

“You haven’t asked about my week,” he said.

Her first reaction was irritation. He saw it and shook his head.

“I mean the book. The ordinary parts.”

“Did the narrator improve?”

“No. I did. I stopped expecting him to.”

“That’s going well, then.”

She took his hand. Through the week they had spoken at night, sometimes for five minutes, once for an hour about absolutely nothing that would advance an inquiry. He had told her when his appointment happened and that the account needed work. She had said she was glad he had somewhere proper to take it. Then they had argued over whether making soup counted as cooking if he used every pan he owned.

It would have been easy to make those calls a test of whether he could sound happy enough for her. She had caught herself listening for it. On Thursday she had admitted, “I’m trying to decide from your voice whether you’re all right, and you’re allowed to tell me you’re not.”

He had said he was ashamed and annoyed with himself, and that he still wanted to hear about her day. She had told him about missing a bus while looking directly at it. It had helped more than another careful conversation about trust.

At the end of the market they found steps leading to a small public garden. Ash set the wrapped bowl beside them and peeled an orange. The skin broke in short stubborn pieces. Delilah waited until he had collected a mound of them before offering the easy-peel fruit she’d bought from another box.

“You knew.”

“I suspected.”

“And allowed the work to continue.”

She leaned against his shoulder. “You appeared committed.”

He gave her half of the difficult orange. She accepted it and ate a segment that tasted sharply, unexpectedly good. For a while they sat in the sun with sticky fingers and watched a man attempt to fold a deckchair.

“No advice,” Delilah said when Ash looked up.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You moved.”

“To get away from you.”

She laughed and caught his sleeve. He stayed exactly where he was.

She had wanted a day without proof. Now she found that she wanted to tell him something which could not be verified by a corrected account or a kept appointment. Across the path a woman shook crumbs from a napkin. Delilah watched the birds rearrange themselves beneath it.

“I’ve been thinking about November,” she said.

Ash turned toward her. “In what capacity?”

“As someone who expects it to happen.”

“A sound beginning.”

“There’s a weekend I usually spend pretending I’ll go somewhere. Then I accept work because I haven’t booked anything, and I tell myself I couldn’t have gone.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere with a sea wall and terrible weather. I want to sit inside and watch it happen to other people.”

He smiled. “That sounds achievable.”

“I was wondering whether you’d come.”

He did not answer at once. She could see him take in the invitation, not the travel arrangements but the place she had offered him in a month they had not reached. She resisted the temptation to add that she understood if he couldn’t.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like to go somewhere with you.”

“We can choose it later.”

“I’d like to choose it with you too.”

She looked down at their joined hands. He was not offering her a completed plan whose convenience she would have to admire. It was a small distinction and, for him, an effort. She squeezed his fingers once.

“I should warn you,” she said, “I have strong views about breakfast.”

“I’ve seen you attack cold butter.”

“Then you’re informed.”

The man with the deckchair finally sat. Both of them applauded under their breath, then tried to look innocent when he glanced their way.

After lunch they went to Ash’s flat. Delilah carried the bowl upstairs herself. She wanted to place it on his table, see it among his sensible possessions and decide whether it was really hers. It looked even worse beside his white mugs. She loved it.

Ash found a spoon and put it inside. “For when you visit.”

“I bought it for my flat.”

“Then I shall have to visit.”

“You’ve found the difficulty.”

He took her coat. When she reached for the bowl again, he caught her free hand and brought it to his mouth. The kiss he pressed to her fingers was soft enough to make her go still.

“I’m pleased you asked about November,” he said.

She set the bowl down. “I thought you might be.”

“I don’t think you know how pleased.”

“You could show me.”

He did. Her back met the edge of the table, and she put her arms around him because he was close and she wanted closer. There was orange on his fingers still, a clean bright trace at her cheek. He kissed her until she forgot the joke she had been preparing about seasonal plans. Then he rested his forehead against hers and let her catch her breath.

“You have furniture,” she said. “I’ve inspected one chair.”

“There’s a sofa with no history of movement.”

“We could change that.”

His laughter followed her across the room. They settled together in the warm square of afternoon light. She took off her shoes, tucked her feet beneath her and let him draw her against his side. The pleasure of being held had changed since Friday. She no longer had to wonder whether they would be awkward after wanting each other so much. They could be awkward while fetching a cushion. It had done them no harm.

On the shelf above his desk stood the tin he had described at the café. She pointed to it.

“Previous findings?”

He glanced up and groaned. “I should have put that away.”

“Too late.”

“It’s mostly spare buttons.”

“Mostly?”

He brought it down. Inside were threads, buttons, two short rejected seams and a needle pushed into a folded piece of cloth. Delilah took the tin in her lap. The first attempt at repairing the collar was worse than she had expected; the second was almost successful.

“Why keep these?”

“To remind myself what didn’t work.”

“Do you need both?”

He considered. “Probably not.”

She put them back. “You don’t have to throw them away because I asked.”

“I know. But I might.”

There was a dark blue button at the bottom. Ash saw her notice it.

“I bought that yesterday,” he said. “For your coat. If it matches.”

She held it against her palm. “You bought one?”

“Three. This was the nearest.”

“That’s very restrained.”

“For me.”

She brought the coat from the hall and held the button beside the others. It was slightly wrong: a fraction smaller, its blue a little brighter. She wanted it more because it was not the perfect answer to a problem he had solved without her.

“Will you show me the stitch?” she asked.

He sat beside her and demonstrated on the loose cloth first. She tried the needle on the coat. It went in at the wrong angle and came back through almost where it had started.

“It isn’t warm,” she said.

Ash looked at her, then at the coat. “It also isn’t a transfer.”

Their old foolishness filled his quiet sitting room. She had wondered whether the joke would always belong to that office, to evenings when he had a reason to watch her which she didn’t know. Here it belonged to two people making a bad repair together. It had survived its first purpose.

He held the cloth steady while she tried again. She sewed the button herself, unevenly but securely. When she lifted the coat, it hung where it ought to. She fastened it and unfastened it twice, more pleased than she intended to show.

“You may inspect,” she said.

“I can see it works.”

“An unexpectedly romantic sentence.”

He touched the new button, then the hollow of her wrist. “I’m learning.”

Later she read beside him while he finished the book she’d lent him. He grumbled aloud at the narrator. She said she had warned him. The light travelled across the floor until it no longer reached their feet. Delilah did not reach for her phone to fill the silence.

At six she became hungry. They looked in his kitchen and found eggs, potatoes and something in a jar neither trusted. Ash threw the jar away without opening it. She chopped the potatoes while he put water on. This time, cooking together held less fear of doing something wrong.

She stayed that night because she wanted to wake in his home. She said so while they were still eating. His smile made her set down her fork and walk around the table to kiss him.

Before bed she put the blue coat on its hook and set the ugly bowl beside it, ready to take home tomorrow. She would leave with her own things. She would come back because she had been happy here, not because forgetting something could provide an excuse.

Ash found her looking at the coat.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing to mend.”

He put an arm around her waist. She leaned back into him and turned her face to his.

For once she let that be the whole answer.