After the Last Tune

Fenna handed me the empty programme box after the last tune and asked whether I wanted the unused copies.

“How many?”

“Nine. I miscounted somewhere.”

“Or people shared.”

“You can let me have one mistake.”

I took the box. She smiled, tiredly. The hall lights were up, bleaching the flowers and making every footprint visible on the polished floor. For years this had been my favourite unhappy part of an evening: the pleasure of having made it happen, the wish that somebody else would make it stop.

Tonight the closing volunteers were moving the chairs. One asked Gethin to pass an abandoned cardigan, and he did. Nobody recruited him to prove that his presence had been worthwhile.

He came over carrying our coats.

“I’ll take this home,” I said, touching the box. “I might stay a few minutes.”

He looked from me to Fenna and back. “Shall I walk with you afterwards?”

I wanted to say yes. I had imagined taking him upstairs, the relief of shutting my own door, his hand undoing the clasp of my necklace because I could never reach it properly. But Fenna was holding the programme she had read from, folding one corner and smoothing it again.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Is that all right?”

“Of course.”

I went with him to the outer door. He put on his coat and waited while I found my own sentence.

“I had a lovely time.”

“So did I.”

“Even the fork?”

“I made a sacrifice.”

I laughed and leaned towards him. He kissed me, warm and unhurried despite the cold coming through the open door. I wanted him to know that staying here was a choice about Fenna, not a way of taking the evening back.

“I wanted you beside me,” I said.

“I know. You let me be there.”

He touched my cheek before he went. I watched him cross the car park, then turned back into the hall.

· · ·Scene break

Fenna had found the scissors from the first fundraiser beneath a cloth in the cupboard. She held them up when I returned.

“They travel.”

“They’ve always had ambitions beyond us.”

“I’m taking them home.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

She put them in her bag, where we could both see her do it.

The remaining volunteers finished quickly. Fenna thanked them and asked the caretaker how long we had; he said ten minutes, then returned to the kitchen to switch everything off. We were not alone in charge of a building. We had ten minutes in the corner of a room somebody else was closing.

She sat at the table near the door. I drew up a chair beside her.

“I read what he wrote,” she said.

I kept my hands on the box.

“His reply?”

“On Thursday. Someone sent it.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t send it.”

“No.”

She nodded, as if that answered a question she had not wanted to ask me.

“I wish he’d written it eighteen months ago.”

“So do I.”

“He still thinks he was right.”

“About some things. So do you.”

Fenna looked at me sharply. I had sounded more pleased with my symmetry than either of us deserved.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was tidy and unhelpful.”

“A good deal of it has been untidy and unhelpful. I’ll allow a change.”

I laughed once. She did not, but her mouth softened.

For a while we looked at the flowers. Someone had used jam jars because the hall’s vases were too tall. One stem leaned across the gap between us, dropping pollen on the clean table.

“It was a good evening,” I told her.

“You missed the trouble with the kitchen.”

“What trouble?”

“Their urn took longer to boil. That’s why the cake went first.”

I thought of my silent complaint about the plates.

“That makes sense.”

“I did think of asking you to speak to them. Then I realised I’d be asking you to hear the same thing they’d just told me.”

I sat with that. Some of our partnership had been sharing work. Some had been passing distress back and forth until neither of us knew whose hands were free.

“I would have gone,” I said.

“I know. Then you would have been cross that I’d interrupted your evening, and I’d have been cross that you were cross when you’d said yes.”

She took the bent programme from beside her bag and flattened it against the table.

“It wasn’t all like that,” she added.

“No.”

“I don’t want the last ten years turned into something we were foolish to enjoy.”

I reached for her hand. She let me take it.

“They weren’t. We weren’t.”

We had waited in the rain for the first hall key. We had gone home laughing after evenings nobody else would have called successful. When my print shop had changed owners, she had listened to me rehearsing a conversation about keeping my hours until she could have delivered it herself. I had sat in her kitchen through the month her work made her miserable. None of that had been false because I now wanted a Friday without responsibility.

“I missed you tonight,” she said.

I had imagined her saying she needed me. This was much harder.

“I missed you too.”

“You looked very happy.”

“I was.”

She looked down at our hands. I let the answer stand. She could miss me and I could have been happy; neither feeling had to disprove the other.

The caretaker called that he was ready. Fenna stood and picked up her bag. I took my box, and we went out beneath the corridor lights somebody had complained were too bright.

“Come for tea,” she said at her car. “If you don’t have to be anywhere.”

“I’d like to.”

· · ·Scene break

At her house I put the box under the kitchen chair and then moved it against the wall. I wanted room for my feet.

Fenna filled the kettle. We were tired enough to stop finding graceful ways into things.

“I’d like you back next Friday,” she said. “Doing the welcome with me. The anniversary was one evening.”

“I know.”

“We said that at the meeting.”

“We did.”

She turned from the kettle. “You don’t want to.”

I looked at the familiar cupboard handle. I could see my own face dimly reflected in the glass beside it.

“Not every week.”

“I haven’t asked you to do every week.”

“We don’t ask. We put the things in the car and turn up. If I say yes to Friday, we’ll both assume the Friday after until I make another speech.”

She folded her arms, then unfolded them, irritated by herself.

“What are you asking me to do?”

“Not be the only other person.”

“I’ve asked people. They say they’re busy.”

“So do I, at work. Sometimes it means I can’t. Sometimes it means I don’t want the whole job.”

I heard how easily that might become advice offered from the comfortable side of an escape. Fenna had hosted tonight, taken the complaints, stood beside someone less accustomed to knowing what she needed. I had danced with the man she had reason to dislike.

“I’ll take one welcome shift a month,” I said. “A fixed one, if that helps. I won’t be the person who fills every gap.”

“And the notices? And the bookings?”

“We need to divide them. At the next committee. I’ll bring what I actually do, written down so somebody can decide whether they want a part of it.”

“You make it sound as though I refuse help.”

“Sometimes you do. So do I. We complain nobody knows how, then keep the key.”

The kettle clicked off. She poured the water before answering, giving us both a small mercy.

“People like knowing who’ll be there.”

“Yes. Including me. I want to know you’ll be there when I come to dance. I also want to see you when there’s no dance.”

She gave me a mug and sat opposite me.

“You’d have more time for that if you weren’t seeing him.”

“I would.”

It was true. I would not insult her by pretending a new relationship took nothing from an old friendship.

“I’m still choosing it,” I said. “I don’t want to give you whatever hours are left over and call that fair. But I can’t promise the same week we had before.”

She stirred tea she hadn’t sweetened.

“I don’t know what I want instead.”

“Neither do I.”

We drank for a while. Her clock was four minutes fast; I had once offered to correct it and been told she preferred it. I stopped using it to calculate how late it was.

“Tuesday walks,” she said eventually. “Not every Tuesday. If we want to.”

“And no programmes.”

“You can bring one if it happens to be funny.”

I laughed. She looked tired rather than reassured, which was a face I could trust more than relief delivered because I wanted it.

“I’m not promising to like him,” she said.

“I haven’t asked you to.”

“You’ve hoped very loudly.”

I considered denying it, then remembered the number of times I had prepared a favourable account before she even asked.

“I’ll try to hope more quietly.”

She smiled into her mug.

When I left she helped me carry the programme box to the car. She insisted on driving me home because the buses were infrequent now and neither of us wanted to finish the evening watching the timetable on my phone. I let her do this kindness without making it a debt I had to repay with every Friday.

Upstairs I took out one programme and put it on my desk. Our names were still together on the back. I was glad nobody had reprinted it.

I sent Gethin a message: Home. Tea with Fenna. I want to see you on Sunday, somewhere without a welcome desk.

His reply came while I was taking off my shoes.

My flat has no desk. I checked.

Mine does. We’ll have to risk yours.

Come for the whole day, if you want.

I wrote yes, and set the phone beside the programme. On Sunday there would be people dancing at the Assembly without him. Next Friday there would be people welcoming arrivals without me for part of the night.

I couldn’t yet tell whether we had arranged enough help for all the weeks ahead. I would bring that question to the people whose room it was. Tonight I wanted to take off my necklace and go to bed, with the invitation waiting for morning.