A Table for Two

“Yes,” Gethin said. “Wednesday.”

I had prepared for a polite refusal. It left me with nothing to say about an agreement.

“There’s a café by the bus station.”

“There are three.”

“The one with the terrible blue chairs.”

“Half past six?”

“I finish at six. There may be glue on me.”

His eyes went to my hands. “I’ll take the risk.”

At nine I helped Fenna pack the cash box. I did not tell her about Wednesday. Keeping something for myself felt so like hiding it that I spent most of Sunday finding small reasons to ring her. None was worth the telephone call.

By Wednesday I had selected a blouse which suggested I had not selected a blouse, rejected it for that very reason, and gone to work in my usual green shirt. There was indeed glue on the cuff. It had dried clear, but I knew where it was.

Gethin stood when I reached the blue chairs. He had chosen a table for two. No spare seats, no papers laid out, no possibility that we were waiting for the rest of a committee.

“You haven’t ordered,” I said.

“You haven’t told me what you want.”

I put down my bag. “Coffee.”

“That part I worked out.”

He let me pay for my own. I liked him more for not making a ceremony of that, and immediately disliked myself for keeping accounts of things that ought to be ordinary.

The table rocked when I leaned on it. Gethin reached for a folded napkin, then stopped with it in his hand.

“You may repair the furniture,” I told him. “I’m not opposed to all useful activity.”

“A relief. I’ve had quite a restrained week.”

He folded it again and slid it beneath the short leg. His head dipped close to my knee; when he sat up, he found me looking at him.

For four days I had been able to pretend that the feeling at the fundraiser belonged to the dress, the music, the strange pleasure of being released from a duty. Here he was in a dark jumper, in a café which smelled of hot milk and damp coats. The feeling had followed me.

“How was work?” he asked.

“We made six hundred wedding menus. Half the guests have apparently requested a meal without the food in it.”

“Were they the difficult half?”

“They were all difficult. The easy guests are the ones who stay at home.”

He laughed. I had made him laugh in company before, but there had always been somebody else to receive it. Now I had to bear being the whole audience.

“Yours?”

“A driver asked for next Thursday off. I moved four shifts, rang two people and discovered he’d meant Tuesday.”

“Did you tell him?”

“At some length.”

“I like that you don’t claim to have been gracious.”

“You’d know I was lying.”

His coffee arrived with a biscuit he put immediately on the edge of my saucer.

“You used to give those away,” he said. “At Fridays. I never knew if you disliked them or there weren’t enough.”

“There weren’t enough.”

“Well.”

I ate it. It was a poor biscuit and tasted better than it deserved.

We talked about the café chairs, which were more comfortable than their appearance promised, and the notices in its window, which promised rather more than they could possibly deliver. Someone offered to turn my life around in six sessions. Another person could mend a zip while I waited. I knew which I would trust.

Gethin took a small card from his coat pocket.

“Speaking of notices.”

The Sunday Assembly. A blue line drawing of two empty shoes, the hall address, the admission price. No photograph of smiling people to make arriving alone feel like an entrance examination.

“We’ve changed the starting time next month,” he said. “Would you put that in Friday’s email? A few people do both.”

He had asked lightly. My fingers had already found the edge of the card, checking the trim.

“No.”

He looked up.

I laid it flat between us. “The people on that list gave us their addresses for Friday notices. I won’t use it for yours.”

“I’m not asking for the addresses. Just a line.”

“I know what you’re asking. The answer’s still no.”

There it was: the small table for two turned into opposite sides. I wished I had waited until after I had eaten his biscuit.

He ran a thumb along the handle of his cup.

“Would you send it if it came from another group?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“That wasn’t quite—“

“I have sent things I shouldn’t. The church sale. A lift somebody needed. That doesn’t make it a list I can lend you because I’m having coffee with you.”

He looked at the card. The line of his mouth had lost its amusement.

I wanted to soften it. Offer a smaller announcement, promise to ask Fenna, turn my no into an administrative delay. It was astonishing how quickly I could begin negotiating against myself when I wanted a man to go on looking pleased to see me.

“All right,” he said.

I waited.

“Put it in the café window, if they’ll have it. I’ll ask people to pass it on themselves.”

“You think I’m being difficult.”

“A bit. I also think you’ve answered.”

He took back the card. There was no sigh, no improved argument. He tucked it into his pocket and reached for the sugar.

“You don’t take sugar.”

“No. This one’s sticking to the table.”

I laughed, badly timed and much too relieved.

He looked at me. “Did you think I’d go?”

“I thought the coffee might become very long.”

“It hasn’t yet.”

Outside, a bus emptied beneath the shelter. People shook out umbrellas, although the rain had stopped. I watched a woman take a man’s arm before stepping over a puddle and wanted that easy claim with a force that embarrassed me. I had not wanted anybody’s arm for a long time. I had wanted spare hands, someone to carry the other end. It was different.

“May I keep one?” I asked.

“Of the cards?”

“For me. Unless there’s a qualifying process.”

He put it back on the table.

“Six on Sunday. You can leave whenever you like. Most people do.”

“Such persuasive publicity.”

“I was going to employ a print finisher, but she refused my first proposal.”

“And yet you persevered.”

“With the coffee.”

He held my gaze while he said it. I put the card in my bag, away from the folded Friday receipts.

We stayed until the woman behind the counter began stacking blue chairs at the other end of the room. Gethin told me that he ate toast for supper more often than he intended. I confessed to ironing only the visible portions of clothes. He said he had never suspected such a profound fraud. I offered to show him the backs of my shirts and heard the invitation a moment too late.

His smile changed.

“One evening,” he said.

I took a sip from an empty cup.

At the door we both turned towards the crossing. My bus stop was on the far side; his was down the road.

“I won’t see much of you if I come on Sunday,” I said. “You’ll be running it.”

“I’m doing the first half-hour on the door. Then someone else takes over.”

“And you let them?”

“Sometimes badly.”

We stopped at the lights. His hand hung beside mine. I touched two fingers to his sleeve.

“I’m coming because I want to see you. I haven’t decided to join your cause.”

He turned his hand and gave me his palm.

“I was hoping you hadn’t brought one of your own.”

“There’s still time.”

“Then I’d better hold this.”

He took my hand. We crossed when the green figure appeared, and on the far pavement neither of us let go immediately. His thumb rested against the base of mine. I could feel his pulse, or my own; I had become too interested to distinguish them.

“Sunday,” he said.

“Sunday.”

My bus came. He released me without making me hurry. Through the window I saw him still standing by the crossing, one hand in his coat pocket, looking after me.

· · ·Scene break

Fenna answered on the fourth ring with a question about tablecloths. I had called her from my kitchen, before I could make something to eat and then use eating as an excuse.

“The short ones or the long ones?” she asked.

“For the anniversary?”

“Unless we’re doing another event I’ve forgotten.”

“The short ones. People’s heels catch in the long ones.”

“That’s what I said. Are you all right?”

She could tell already. Ten years of friendship was not only an obstacle. It was someone who knew the sound of me trying to get round to a subject.

“I had coffee with Gethin.”

The rustle at her end stopped.

“I see.”

“And I’m going to his Sunday.”

“His Sunday.”

“The Assembly.”

“You don’t have to change the name for me.”

I looked at his card on my table. I had set it apart from the post, which was another small admission.

“I’m telling you because I don’t want somebody else to tell you.”

“Thank you.”

She meant it. She also sounded as if I had handed her an unwanted parcel which she now had to carry indoors.

“It doesn’t mean I think you were wrong about everything.”

“How much of it does it mean?”

“I don’t know yet.”

That was the answer I had avoided giving myself. She let it stay between us.

“I shall miss you on Sunday,” she said at last.

“We don’t usually—“

“I know we don’t.”

I sat down. My kitchen chair did not rock. Everything in my flat was where I had left it, sensibly arranged, and I suddenly wished I could have explained this while walking beside her.

“Fenna.”

“You get to change your mind,” she said. “I get to remember agreeing with you.”

I had no correction for that. We talked about the cloths once more, because neither of us knew how to finish on the other subject. When we said goodnight she used my name, as she always did.

I left the blue card on the table. On Sunday I would have to pick it up and go.