I paid Gethin six pounds to let me into his Sunday and immediately wished I had brought exact change. He held my ten-pound note while I stood in the doorway, looking like a woman who needed assistance.
“You could have warned me about the entrance fee,” I said.
“It’s on the card.”
“I thought you might have a special rate for hostile observers.”
“Eight pounds.”
I laughed. He gave me four back.
There was a queue behind me, two women discussing the bus diversion and a man holding his dance shoes in a supermarket bag. Gethin greeted all three, and I stepped aside before I could help with the change. My bag was still on my shoulder. There was no desk under which to put it.
The Sunday Assembly used the smaller hall, across Bellweather from the Friday Rooms. Its floor had a pale strip where a partition had once stood. Chairs sat in groups of four instead of round tables. I found one with a view of the door, then chose another because I disliked how much I wanted the view.
A woman in red shoes asked whether the seat opposite was taken.
“No.”
She sat and began changing out of her trainers.
“First time?”
“Here, yes.”
“It gets less peculiar. The changing partners. You can stay with someone if you want. I usually do the first two changes, then I sit one out.”
“Is that permitted?”
She looked at me over a buckle. “Who would stop me?”
A fair question. I had brought the tone of someone examining a system; she was deciding what to do with her evening.
The first tune began before Gethin left the desk. Red Shoes went to ask a woman by the window. The man with the supermarket bag stood halfway up, sat again, then took a drink of water. I recognised the movement. I had seen it on Fridays, and on Fridays had sometimes pretended not to, because drawing attention to a lonely person could itself be unkind.
I asked him to dance.
He smiled so suddenly that I was glad I had. He was a careful dancer who counted under his breath until he trusted the tune. Halfway through he told me he had been coming for three months.
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Mostly. Last week I didn’t dance until eight.”
“Even with the changes?”
“I missed the first one. Then everyone seemed to know what they were doing.”
He said it without accusation. I had imagined arriving here and being obliged to surrender my entire argument. Instead I was dancing in another room full of people who could not always make themselves understood.
When a volunteer announced the partner exchange, we thanked each other. My next partner liked a wider step than I did. I asked him to shorten it; he apologised and did. The following woman asked whether I wanted to lead, and I said yes before I could calculate whether Gethin was watching.
I enjoyed myself.
It was inconvenient, but it was not treachery. For three minutes I knew the difference.
Gethin found me back at my chair, drinking water from a paper cup that softened alarmingly at the rim.
“Well?” he said.
“You have a damp-cup problem.”
“Apart from that.”
“Do you want my report?”
He rubbed the side of his neck. “No. I’d like a dance.”
“Then ask for one.”
He did, plainly, and I went with him.
We danced something slow enough that I could hear his breathing between the phrases. The room was warmer now. His sleeve brushed my bare forearm when we turned, and I remembered choosing the blouse, folding back the cuffs twice, pretending the decision was about the temperature.
“You led that last one,” he said.
“I sometimes do.”
“I know. Would you like to?”
I looked up. “With you?”
“Unless you’ve received a better offer.”
We changed our hold at the side of the floor. He waited while I settled my hand. The first turn went badly because he anticipated it and I corrected him too sharply.
“You don’t trust me,” I said.
“I trusted you to go the other way.”
“That’s not quite the same thing.”
“I’m discovering that.”
I laughed, and he stopped trying to guess. By the next phrase he was following the pressure of my hand. I liked the responsibility; I liked that he could be awkward at something without appointing me the cause. When we passed the windows I saw our reflection briefly, his head inclined towards mine, my face quite unlike the one I wore at the welcome table.
At the end he kept my hand for a moment.
“Again later?”
“Yes.”
No club had required him to ask. I let myself enjoy that too.
He danced with other people. So did I. Once I looked across the room and caught him laughing with Red Shoes, and it pleased me that he was happy when he was not attending to me. Later, when he came back, I was pleased by something less generous.
“You said later,” I told him.
“I meant now.”
The last hour passed without my counting chairs or collecting cups. A volunteer dropped a spoon by my foot; I handed it back. That was the sum of my contribution to the running of the evening. It seemed inadequate, and then the music started again and I forgot.
Scene break
I waited outside while he fetched his coat. We had agreed to walk as far as the corner together. I knew the bus timetable; I had looked at it twice without mentioning the second bus.
He came out carrying a tub of unused biscuits.
“Wages?” I asked.
“They’ll go soft in the cupboard.”
“Everything in that cupboard will go soft. It smells of mop.”
“You found the defect in our social model.”
“One of them.”
He glanced at me.
We walked beneath the hall windows. Inside, people were still folding chairs. I felt the old tug to go back. Gethin did not hurry me past the door, and I did not turn.
“The man I danced with first,” I said. “He told me he sat for most of last week.”
Gethin’s mouth tightened. “I thought he’d been dancing.”
“He might not have wanted to ask.”
“I’ll look out for him.”
“Don’t tell him I said.”
“I won’t.”
I could have made the observation a little victory. I could hear the report I might give Fenna: it was no better over there; people were still left out. But I had seen the pleasure on Red Shoes’ face when she found a partner, and I had been asked what I wanted to do. Neither room could be reduced to the evidence most convenient to me.
“I had a good time,” I told him.
He looked at me more fully then.
“I was hoping you would.”
“You don’t have to do the satisfied founder’s expression. It wasn’t entirely your arrangements.”
“What was it?”
“You know what it was.”
“I’d like to hear.”
We had reached the corner. There was a closed florist’s shop beside the stop, buckets turned upside down under its awning. I stood against the brick pier, leaving the pavement clear, and faced him.
“You,” I said. “A good deal of it was you.”
He set the biscuit tub on the low wall. It was a deeply unromantic object, with a cracked green lid. I loved that he remembered to put it somewhere level.
“I want to kiss you,” he said.
My heart was beating hard enough to make a fool of any clever answer.
“Yes. Please do.”
He came close, giving me time to lift my face. His hand touched my cheek, warm after the cool air, and his mouth met mine with a gentleness that made me move towards him. I held the front of his coat. The fabric was rough beneath my fingers; I had something to do with my hands now and no wish to be useful.
He drew back far enough to see me.
“Was that—“
“Yes,” I said. “And I would like another. You needn’t conduct a survey.”
He smiled against my mouth.
The second kiss was less cautious. I felt the change in him when I put my hand at the back of his neck, the small unsteady breath he let out before he kissed me again. His other hand settled at my waist. I stepped nearer until the space I had been measuring all evening was gone.
For a while there was only the brick cool behind my shoulder and Gethin warm in front of me, his thumb still at my cheek, his attention making it difficult to remember why I had ever been satisfied with being liked at a distance.
I was the one who stopped. I kept hold of his coat while I did it.
“I need a minute.”
His hand loosened at once. “All right.”
“Not because I didn’t like it.”
“I hoped not.”
I looked at his mouth and laughed. The sound came out shakily. He was not entirely steady either; that helped.
“I have been very sensible for years,” I said.
“That must have been tiring.”
“You have no idea.”
He brushed a loose strand of hair away from my lip and let his hand fall. He did not turn my confession into an invitation I had not made.
A bus went by in the opposite direction. Mine was due in four minutes.
“Supper,” I said.
He blinked. “Now?”
“This week. A walk, and supper. I finish early on Thursday.”
“At yours?”
“If that suits you.”
“It does.”
“I mean supper.”
His face softened. “I heard you.”
I wanted more than supper. I was also entitled to arrange the evening I could manage. Holding both thoughts at once felt new, although I was forty-one and should have had some practice.
He took my hand while we waited. I leaned against his shoulder, choosing it, and he turned his face briefly into my hair.
“No trumpet,” I said.
“It would only have held us up.”
“I might miss a step without it.”
“You did all right.”
“So did you. Eventually.”
He laughed, and kissed the side of my head. The bus appeared at the junction. I moved away in time to signal it, neither rescued from the evening nor forced to end it before I wanted.
From the step I looked back.
“Bring the biscuits on Thursday.”
“Planning a cold supper?”
“Lower your expectations. It will be good for you.”
He was still smiling when the doors closed. I found a seat with my mouth tender from kissing him and the whole ordinary journey home to enjoy what had happened.