The Spare Blanket

Anouk found Orson in her room holding a spare blanket and looking guilty. It was late January, she had been out buying bread, and the sight of him beside her bed made her want to kiss him before she understood why he looked as if he’d been caught stealing.

“What have you done?”

“Brought this.”

“I can see that.”

“You said the room was cold.”

“Yes.”

“So I thought—”

He stopped. She set the bread on the desk.

“Orson.”

“I asked before coming up. Your landlady let me in because you said I’d be here at six.”

“I did. That’s not the problem.”

“What is?”

She looked at the blanket. It was a nice blanket. Soft, dark red, folded with the edges aligned. She was cold at night. His kindness was entirely practical. Yet she felt a small prick of irritation, made worse by knowing how ungrateful it would sound.

“I wanted to choose one.”

He looked down at it.

“Oh.”

“Not because there’s anything wrong with yours.”

“I know.”

“I’ve spent years living with whatever was in a room when I arrived. I wanted to choose this.”

He nodded slowly, then folded the blanket over his arm.

“I should have asked.”

She came closer. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment. Anouk could feel herself wanting to take it back, to accept the blanket and the small displacement of her preference because his face had fallen. Then she remembered the chair, the calls, the room in Varelle. Love did not become kinder by making both people impossible to read.

“Will you come and choose one with me tomorrow?” she asked.

“Am I allowed an opinion?”

“One. Carefully supervised.”

He smiled. She took the blanket from him and put it on the chair.

“For tonight,” she said. “Borrowed. With thanks.”

“And tomorrow?”

“You can carry it home in disgrace.”

He laughed, and she kissed him. The kiss lasted long enough for the awkwardness to become something else: the relief of a small disagreement survived without either disappearing.

· · ·Scene break

They had been learning ordinary proximity for six weeks. It contained less effortless harmony than the December plan might have suggested and more happiness than either had dared count on.

Anouk worked in her room. Orson taught, made things, dealt with the tedious parts of earning a living. They did not eat together every night. Sometimes she wanted to finish a chapter of the book she was reading without discussing it; sometimes he wanted to watch something she found incomprehensible. They learned to say those things before becoming irritable about the other’s innocent presence.

They also acquired habits neither had arranged. Wednesday supper at his. A Sunday walk when the weather allowed. Messages that did not ask for a report, only offered a ridiculous sight or a line that had made one of them think of the other. Her favourite mug at his house. His book on the shelf in her room, with the page marked by a receipt rather than a claim.

That evening, after they had eaten, he fell asleep while she was reading. She looked down at his head on her lap and felt desire arrive inside tenderness, unexpectedly fierce. Not because he was unavailable to her, but because he had trusted her with this unguarded weight. She let him sleep. When he woke, blinking and embarrassed, she told him she wanted to kiss him.

“Now?” he asked.

“When you’re awake enough to know who I am.”

“I know who you are.”

“Prove it.”

“Anouk Fennell. Unreliable defender of biscuits.”

“Convincing.”

He sat up and kissed her. Slowly at first, then with the answering hunger that still surprised her after all these months. She put the book aside. He asked whether she wanted him to stay, and she said yes without making it sound casual.

Later, warm beneath the borrowed blanket, she lay close enough to feel his breathing settle. He traced a gentle path over her shoulder, then stopped when she caught his hand and kissed it. Their intimacy had become less anxious without becoming less wanted. She could laugh in the middle of a kiss, ask for more closeness, ask for a pause, tell him she liked being looked at. He could say what pleased him without hiding it behind what he hoped would please her.

“I love this room with you in it,” she said.

“I love that it’s yours.”

She looked at him. He meant it. She could tell because he had begun to ask before moving the chair.

· · ·Scene break

The next day they chose a yellow blanket, a shade Orson described as either cheerful or confrontational depending on the light. Anouk bought it immediately.

The following Saturday supplied a less picturesque lesson. Orson had invited Anouk to lunch and then spent the first half-hour answering messages about a change to his evening class schedule. She sat with a bowl of soup cooling in front of her, telling herself that work mattered and she should be generous.

When he reached for the phone a fourth time, she put down her spoon.

“Do you want me to go?”

He looked up, startled. “No.”

“Then I need you here.”

“I just have to sort this.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded. “Then say that. I can take a walk, or go home, or have lunch with you in an hour. I don’t want to sit here pretending we’re eating together.”

He looked at the phone, then at her soup. She could see the reflexive defence begin: it was work, it wasn’t frivolous, he hadn’t meant anything by it. All true. None the point.

“I did the thing I hated,” he said.

“Not quite. I’m in the room, so I can interrupt.”

“That may be worse.”

“It doesn’t have to be a competition.”

He smiled reluctantly, then put the phone down.

“I need twenty minutes to send one clear reply. I can leave the rest until later. Would you give me that?”

“Yes.”

She went out and bought apples. On the way back she stopped to look at a dress in a window, then at a dog asleep with its head against the glass of the next shop. Twenty minutes was not a wound. Being required to act as if waiting didn’t count would have been one.

When she returned, the phone was in the hall and the soup was hot. Orson stood when she came in.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

He kissed her, gently, then stepped back. “Sit where you like.”

She chose the chair by the window. He sat opposite, with no device between them, and asked her about the book she’d been reading. She told him, then asked about the actual work problem. Once he wasn’t making her compete with it, she wanted to know.

Afterwards they washed up together. Anouk bumped his hip with hers.

“What?” he asked.

“I like that we can be cross and still have lunch.”

“I would prefer to be charming at all times.”

“You’d be unbearable.”

He laughed, dried his hands and drew her towards him. She let him, feeling the uncomplicated pleasure of a repair made while the thing was still small enough to hold.

A week later they sat under the yellow blanket while he told her about the summer week he wanted to take alone. A walking trip, modest, already checked against his leave and budget. He had been thinking about it since the conversation in December.

Anouk heard herself ask, “While I’m here?”

He turned towards her. “Yes.”

She looked at the folded edge of the blanket.

“I’m being ridiculous,” she said.

“Perhaps not ridiculous.”

“I go away for months. You want a week.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t feel something about it.”

She laughed softly. “I had imagined we were using all the time I was here.”

“All of it?”

“When you say it like that, I sound exhausting.”

“You aren’t. But I don’t want us to make the months at home into a debt we pay by never being apart.”

She sat back, hearing the same principle from the other side. It was less comfortable there.

“You’re right.”

“I’d still like you to say if you’re disappointed.”

“I am. A little. And I want you to go.”

He kissed her temple. “Thank you.”

“Send me a photograph of something unhelpful.”

“A blister?”

“Something slightly less intimate.”

He laughed. She leaned against him, letting the disappointment be small and survivable rather than turning it into a verdict.

Then she asked about April.

“Would you still like the two weeks?”

“Yes.”

“I’m looking at a room with enough space for two people to exist without apologising. It costs more. I can cover my stay, but we’d need to split the extra for your weeks.”

“That seems fair.”

“I don’t want to assume.”

“Good. Neither do I.”

They looked at the options together later, after supper. Anouk had chosen a different town for her March and April block, one where a shorter stay fit the budget and the practical arrangements were clear. She had work booked for the first month. Orson would join for the first two weeks of April, then return to his classes. She would come home on the fourth of May, the date they chose after checking the journey. The later travel block would come after summer, decided within the same annual limit rather than invented as an exception.

The dates mattered. They were not the most romantic part of the evening. The most romantic part was Orson looking at her after they’d finished and saying, “I’m looking forward to buying groceries with you somewhere else.”

She kissed him hard enough to make him put the phone down.

“That’s a very low standard,” she said.

“Particular standard.”

“Yes.”

· · ·Scene break

Before she left in March, Anouk invited Meriel and Zadie to Orson’s for supper. She asked him first; he agreed, then asked whether she would mind making the pudding because he had exhausted his ideas. They were learning.

Meriel arrived with flowers. Zadie brought bread and an announcement that she would not discuss cupboards under any circumstances. They discussed them for seven minutes.

Anouk watched Orson laugh at the table. There was a looseness in him she hadn’t seen in July, not because she had cured him of anything but because he was less occupied with making himself easy to have around. He said when he disagreed. He took the last good piece of bread after asking if anyone wanted to split it. He let her clear plates while he finished a story.

She loved him with an intensity that sometimes felt almost inconvenient to the ordinary act of sitting across from him.

When the others had gone, she stood in the kitchen doorway and waited for him to turn.

“What?” he asked.

“I was thinking about the first night.”

“The chair?”

“The gloves.”

He looked at the yellow gloves by the sink. “Really?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I could put them on.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

He laughed, then crossed the room. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, enjoying the easy strength of his hands at her waist.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

“I’ll miss you too.”

“I don’t want to spend the last two days proving that.”

“Neither do I.”

So they didn’t. They worked, ate, walked, made love within the privacy and tenderness they had learned together, and packed what needed packing. The sadness was present without occupying every room.

On her last morning Anouk locked her own door. The yellow blanket lay folded on the bed. The desk held the lamp she’d bought locally while the one from Varelle remained stored with the owner until a future visit; she had decided not to turn transporting an object into an urgent moral problem. Her mug waited on its shelf. Her rent was paid for the months away.

She put the key in the inside pocket of her bag, then went downstairs to Orson.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

It was true in a way it hadn’t been in August. She was ready to go. She had also made somewhere to return.

He took her hand, and they walked towards the station together.