The Noticeboard

I put the noticeboard key on the committee table before I gave anyone the list of jobs.

The treasurer looked at it. “Have we lost the spare again?”

“No. I’ve brought mine back.”

Fenna sat beside me with her coat still on. We had walked from the car park together, discussing a hole in her glove. I had told her on Saturday that I intended to leave my permanent committee seat; she had asked whether I would still come tonight, and I had said yes. Neither of us could accuse the other of being surprised.

That had not made the walk easier.

“I’d like to finish the handover this month,” I said. “I’m stepping down as secretary. I’m still a member. I’ll keep the one welcome shift I’ve offered.”

The music organiser reached for my list. “Is this about the anniversary?”

“It’s about how much of my week I want to give. The anniversary made me think about it.”

“We didn’t vote you off the committee.”

“I know. This is my decision.”

It was strange to have to explain that I could leave without being driven out. I had spent so long making a case for why I deserved to stay that the words felt almost discourteous.

There were sensible objections. The bookings had to be confirmed. Someone had to keep the membership list. I knew which changes to the programme could be printed late and which would cost us more. Those were real things, and I had written them down, with dates and contacts already available to the committee. Nobody needed a private conversation with me to discover how the hall invoice worked.

The quiet member who handled bookings read two lines and frowned.

“I thought Fenna did that.”

“Sometimes she does,” I said. “Sometimes I do. That’s why I’ve listed it separately.”

Fenna took a sheet. “I can do the weekly reminder. I won’t do the welcome every Friday as well.”

I looked at her.

She looked back, a little defiantly. “You aren’t the only one with things to do.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

For the next half-hour we made an arrangement that pleased nobody completely. The bookings member would take the member notices as well, with Fenna handling the first two while he learnt the process. The treasurer would keep the keys and receipts. The music organiser would ask for volunteers for a two-person welcome rota, one experienced member beside anyone new. If a shift remained empty, the committee would decide what could be reduced rather than putting my name in without asking.

I offered a handover evening. I did not offer to stay until everyone felt ready; we would have been there into another decade.

Then I gave them the proposal I most wanted to control.

“I’d like us to try two voluntary partner changes at an ordinary Friday. Anyone can stay with their partner. Say that clearly. See whether people who arrive alone get more of an evening.”

The music organiser sighed. “So we become Sunday.”

“No. We keep our evening. We try two changes.”

“It’ll upset people.”

“It might. We could ask them instead of deciding how upset they’ll be.”

Fenna tapped her pen against the paper. “We did ask before. Some were very clear.”

“Yes. We could ask about a smaller trial now. People have joined since.”

I could hear the eagerness gathering in my voice, my certainty that a good enough explanation would carry them. Gethin’s argument was not mine to repeat as proof that loving him had taught me the correct answer. I had danced in both rooms. I had enjoyed changing partners and watched a man sit alone despite it.

I told them that too.

“It won’t solve everything. I’d like to try it. That’s all.”

The vote went against my proposal as written. They would ask the members first, then consider one change during the first half of an evening. Two of us wanted the immediate trial. Three wanted the consultation.

I was disappointed. I wanted to tell them consultation was the most comfortable word in our cupboard.

Instead I wrote down the decision before remembering this was one of the last times it would be my job.

“Are you still going?” the music organiser asked.

“Yes. Even if you’d voted with me.”

That seemed to trouble her more than an angry resignation would have done.

· · ·Scene break

The noticeboard took longer than the rota.

My old notice was no longer displayed. Its rule remained, passed on by whoever found a Sunday card tucked behind our leaflets. We discussed it as though nobody had chosen to write it, until I heard myself saying that there had been difficulties.

“I chose the words,” I said. “I’m not comfortable keeping a ban because we don’t want to talk about why we made it.”

Fenna laid her pen flat.

“And if people advertise an event on our night?”

“Then people decide where to go. We don’t have to send it to our mailing list. A member can put a truthful public invitation on a board without us recommending it.”

The treasurer asked who would check it was an actual local event rather than somebody selling miracle shoe polish. We agreed that whoever opened the desk could date the card and remove it after the event. Nothing went out through the private member list without permission appropriate to that list. I had refused Gethin that shortcut in a café; loving him had not made the refusal obsolete.

This vote passed, though Fenna wanted the dates printed more clearly than I thought necessary. I would once have offered to remake every notice in a matching format. Tonight I said the person bringing the card could write the date on it.

We finished by fixing the handover evening for the following Tuesday. My duties would end that month; until then I would do the agreed ones. The treasurer put the key in his bag.

I had owned that key for ten years. It was ugly, with a plastic tag rubbed almost white. I watched it disappear as if somebody had removed a small piece of me from the table.

Fenna saw me watching.

“You can still tell us if you think something’s wrong,” she said.

“So can anybody.”

“Yes.”

That was the loss, and part of the point. I would be allowed to care without being entitled to the last word.

· · ·Scene break

Gethin came to my flat on Wednesday carrying an overnight bag and a paperback he thought I would enjoy. I took the book as a gift rather than evidence he had failed the empty-handed test. I had not fallen in love with a man in order to improve him into a rule.

We cooked pasta. He put too much water in the pan; I told him, he said it would boil eventually, and we left it alone.

“I wanted them to vote for it,” I said, standing beside him.

“Of course you did.”

“I wanted to say I was leaving whatever happened, and have what happened be exactly what I wanted.”

He smiled at the stove. “You’d have enjoyed that.”

“Immensely.”

He bumped his shoulder lightly against mine. I turned and kissed the side of his neck, because I could, because I liked him here with my saucepan in his hand. He put it down before kissing me back.

After supper he asked whether he could show me something. It was the draft Sunday announcement on his phone. The first line said people would always find a welcome, whatever other rooms might have taught them to expect.

“We used that when we opened,” he said. “It’s been at the top ever since.”

“You’re asking me to read it?”

“I’m showing you why I deleted it.”

He scrolled. A short exchange with the other Sunday volunteers followed. He had proposed replacing the line with the hours, price and an explanation that partner changes were optional. One person thought the old sentence sounded warmer. He had answered that he no longer wanted their welcome to depend on an insult to somewhere else.

The music man had written that Friday wouldn’t return the favour.

Gethin’s reply was beneath it: They don’t owe us a sentence. We can say what happens here.

I gave the phone back.

“When was that?”

“Yesterday. We’re using the shorter one this weekend.”

He looked at it again, thumb resting below the message. “I wanted to tell them about your vote. That you were changing things. As if that would make it worthwhile.”

“You haven’t?”

“No. You hadn’t told me whether it was public, for a start. And I don’t want you sent to reform a room I don’t even attend.”

The small ache I had carried since the meeting eased. I had not known how much I dreaded bringing him a result he might regard as insufficient.

“One optional change,” I said. “After they ask. Or none, if that’s what they decide.”

“Will you go?”

“Yes. On the Fridays I want.”

He set down his phone and reached for my hand. “Then tell me which one you’d like me at.”

I looked at him. There was no condition about the music, no request that his apology be acknowledged before he came again. He might still dislike an evening. He was asking for one with me.

“The first after my handover,” I said. “And come on Sunday with me this week. I’d like another dance with Red Shoes.”

“She asked after you.”

“You can let her ask me herself.”

He grinned. “I thought you might say that.”

We left the dishes until morning. In my bedroom I had made space on the little table for his water glass and the paperback, but the rest of the room was as I lived in it: a heap of clean clothes, a drawer that didn’t shut unless lifted, the necklace still where I’d put it after the anniversary.

He picked it up to keep the chain from catching under the glass.

“Where would you like this?”

“In the dish. And then come here.”

He did both. I took his face in my hands and kissed him, relieved of nothing except the need to make my room an improved version of itself before he could stay.