The Paper Bag

Orson bought the peaches because Anouk had said she liked things that couldn’t sensibly be packed. It was not, in retrospect, a reliable basis for a picnic.

By the time they reached the grass above the beach, the paper bag had developed a wet corner. He held it away from his trousers.

“That looks serious,” she said.

“I may have made a mistake.”

“Is there a leak?”

“In the peaches.”

She put down her bag and peered into his. Her hair had escaped its clip on one side. All the way up the path he’d resisted the desire to tuck it back, partly because it was their first date and partly because he suspected she would do it herself the instant it annoyed her.

“Oh,” she said. “They’re committed.”

“They were firmer in the shop.”

“Most of us are.”

She took the bag from him before it could collapse and set it on a flat stone. Then she spread the rug she’d brought, weighted two corners with her shoes and sat cross-legged. He had expected some adjustment, a minor disappointment to be smoothed over. Instead she held out a hand for the least damaged peach.

“We’ll have to eat them first.”

“We have sandwiches.”

“We still will afterwards.”

It was an astonishingly reasonable solution. He sat.

Below them the beach made a long pale curve. A family was assembling an ambitious structure from stones near the access steps, too far away for their voices to carry. Out on the water a small boat moved so slowly that he could watch it between bites and find it apparently unchanged. Nothing required him to decide anything except how to keep peach juice off the rug.

Anouk solved her portion by leaning forward over the grass. She looked up to find him watching and raised her eyebrows.

“What?”

“I was thinking this is better than I expected.”

“The fruit?”

“The situation.”

“You expected me to be cross?”

“No.” He paused. “Possibly disappointed.”

“With a peach?”

“With my organisation.”

She considered that, turning the fruit in her fingers. “I asked a man on a picnic, Orson. I haven’t commissioned an event.”

He looked away towards the beach. He had brought extra napkins, water, a knife in a sleeve, two different sandwich fillings because he hadn’t known what she would prefer. He was not ashamed of being prepared. He did notice that he had spent more of the morning trying to prevent her disappointment than wondering what he wanted.

“Do you like them?” she asked.

“What?”

“Peaches.”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re doing well.”

She smiled at him, and he felt the strange relief of not being assessed. It made him want to say something honest, which was both pleasant and a warning.

“I nearly brought a cushion.”

“For the grass?”

“For you.”

She laughed. “I have been sitting down unassisted for some time.”

“I know.”

“You don’t look as though you know.”

“I am learning.”

He passed her a napkin. Her fingers were sticky. His probably were too. She caught his hand before he could withdraw it and turned it palm upwards.

“You’ve got some here.”

She touched the base of his thumb with a clean edge of the napkin. Such a slight thing. He could have done it himself. Yet he let her, aware of her bent head and the careful pressure, of how long it had been since someone had tended to him without first finding him inadequate.

“There.”

He closed his fingers lightly around hers. “Thank you.”

For a moment neither moved.

He knew about August. He had heard her say December. A sensible man could enjoy a picnic without making it bear the weight of everything he had wanted for the past five years.

Anouk glanced at their joined hands. “This is a date, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was beginning to worry we were organising an excellent friendship.”

“I don’t think I could do that today.”

“No?”

“Not honestly.”

She shifted closer on the rug. Her knee touched his. There was room to move away, an entire headland’s worth, and she chose instead to put her other hand against his shoulder.

“I’m going to kiss you,” she said. “Unless you’d rather finish the fruit.”

“I’ve had enough fruit.”

Her mouth was warm and tasted faintly sweet. He met her carefully, then less carefully when she made a small pleased sound and leaned into him. His hand found her waist through the soft cotton of her shirt. There was nothing hurried about her. She gave him time to feel the shape of this first contact, the way her lips parted against his, the light pressure of her fingers at his neck.

He had forgotten that a kiss could contain laughter. She smiled against him when the paper bag slid off its stone, and he did too, and then they kissed again because the interruption had been only fruit and neither was ready to stop.

When she drew back, her palm stayed on his shoulder.

“Oh,” she said.

He couldn’t improve on it.

A breeze lifted the loose hair across her cheek. This time he asked, with his hand half raised, and she tilted her head towards him. He tucked it behind her ear. His fingertips lingered for a moment because she let them.

“I did remember the date,” he said.

Her expression changed, not closing but becoming attentive. “Which one?”

“August.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you to think I’ve decided to ignore it.”

“I haven’t decided that either.”

They sat with the sea in front of them and their knees touching. Orson unwrapped the sandwiches. Anouk took one without examining the alternatives.

He had imagined this conversation going badly, if he had imagined it at all: one of them saying something too large, the other retreating into a disclaimer. But she ate her sandwich and waited. He liked that about her. She could make a silence feel available.

“I haven’t done this very often,” he said.

“Picnics?”

“Dated someone who was going away.”

She looked at him directly. “I have.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes it was lovely. Sometimes one of us thought the other would change their mind.”

“Did you?”

“Once. I stayed another month. It didn’t make the rest of the year different.”

He nodded. She had not said she regretted it. He appreciated that too; he didn’t want to be handed a warning disguised as someone else’s foolishness.

“I like my life,” she said. “I can tell you that without knowing what this is yet.”

“So can I.”

“Then perhaps we could have lunch.”

He looked at the sandwich in his hand. “I think we are.”

“Properly. Without asking it to answer November.”

“All right.”

She leaned her shoulder against his. He let himself enjoy the weight.

· · ·Scene break

Before they went down to the beach, Anouk asked him to close his eyes.

“Why?”

“An experiment.”

“Those are troubling words from someone holding an apple knife.”

“The knife is packed away.”

He closed his eyes. He could hear her shifting beside him, the brush of the rug, a bird making a harsh sound somewhere below the path.

“Tell me five things you can hear,” she said.

“Is this an exercise?”

“It’s something I do in a new place. When I keep looking at it as if I ought to have an opinion.”

He listened. The sea was obvious, but not one sound: a dragging hiss, a pause, then a softer wash. Someone was walking on the path behind them. Anouk’s sleeve moved against the rug. There was the small dry tick of something in the grass.

“You,” he said.

“That isn’t a sound.”

“Your sleeve.”

“Accepted.”

He told her the others. When he opened his eyes, she was looking at him with no joke ready.

“What?”

“You did it.”

“You asked.”

“People sometimes explain why it isn’t necessary.”

He considered that. “Was it?”

“No. That’s part of why I like it.”

She lay back and closed her own eyes. He watched the change in her face when she stopped presenting it to anyone. Not a dramatic transformation. Only the slight release of her mouth, the forehead smoothing. He understood then that she wasn’t merely collecting places to describe afterwards. She had a private way of being in them.

He wanted to be admitted to it without making admission into ownership.

“What can you hear?” he asked.

“You trying not to ask a question.”

He laughed. “That’s very sensitive hearing.”

“Ask.”

“Do you get tired of explaining why you go?”

“Yes.” Her eyes remained closed. “But you aren’t asking why I go. You’re asking what it’s like.”

“Is that better?”

“Much.”

He lay down beside her, leaving a little space between their shoulders. After a moment she moved into it. They listened together without making a lesson of it, and Orson felt the afternoon expand around something he had not known to ask for.

They walked down to the beach after lunch. Orson carried the ruined paper bag inside a plastic one he’d found in his rucksack; she congratulated him on his excessive preparation. At the water’s edge she took off her shoes and stepped into the shallows with an intake of breath so sharp he laughed.

“Warm?” he asked.

“Wonderful. Come in.”

“That sounded dishonest.”

“It was meant to.”

He removed his shoes. The water was cold enough to make his ankles ache, then tolerable, then pleasant in a way he would never have believed from the path. Anouk stood beside him, looking out. Her trousers were rolled unevenly. He wanted to kiss the small patch of skin behind her knee, a thought so specific and unhelpful that he had to concentrate on the horizon.

“Are you trying to like it?” she asked.

“I do like it.”

“You’re frowning.”

“That isn’t because of the sea.”

She turned towards him. The answer reached her gradually. He watched her understand, and felt the answering heat in his own face.

“Well,” she said. “That’s useful information.”

“Meriel was right.”

Anouk laughed and took his hand. They walked a little way through the shallow water, awkwardly avoiding stones. He told her about his classes, the woman who had wanted to make eight identical mugs on her first evening, the man who’d made a tiny jug and insisted it was a large egg cup. She asked which piece he’d been proudest of making himself.

He started to describe a set of serving dishes.

“Proudest,” she said. “Not the ones that sold.”

He looked down at their feet moving through the clear water.

“A bowl. Blue. Badly shaped.”

“Why?”

“Because I made it when I couldn’t seem to make anything.”

She didn’t immediately ask when or why. She squeezed his hand once.

“Could I see it?”

“Yes.”

They walked back by the road. Outside Meriel’s flat, Anouk took the rug from him and looked up at the study window.

“I have three hours of work I owe myself.”

He was disappointed. It was good to know he could be disappointed without making it her problem.

“Then I should let you do it.”

“I’d rather invite you up.”

“Would you?”

“Yes. And then I’d resent the work, which hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Poor work.”

“It’s innocent in all this.”

He put the water bottle in her bag. “Another day.”

She caught his sleeve before he stepped away.

“That’s not a polite way of saying no.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

This was the first thing she’d asked him twice. He thought of the good chair and the peaches, of how easily care could become a demand for reassurance if he wasn’t paying attention.

“Yes,” he said. “You want to see me. You also have a job.”

Her face softened with something that wasn’t merely relief.

“Tuesday?”

“My last class finishes at five. Come to the studio at half past. I’ll show you the bowl.”

“And then?”

He allowed himself to look at her mouth.

“Then we could decide.”

She kissed him on the pavement. Not long, but with sufficient intent that he would remember it for the rest of the walk home. He stayed until she had gone upstairs, then caught himself doing it and smiled at his own predictability.

At home he unpacked the picnic things. There was peach juice on the knife sleeve, sand in one shoe and a damp mark on the rug she’d insisted he borrow until Tuesday because his own had been too small. He washed the knife. He put the rug over the back of a chair.

Then he went to the shelf above the kitchen table and took down the blue bowl.

It listed to the left. He had always thought that was what was wrong with it.

He set it in the middle of the table and sat looking at it for a while.