The Back Row

Fenna had put my chair beside hers for the Tuesday meeting. I had prepared for an empty space and found this much harder.

“Tea?” she asked.

“Please.”

“Usual?”

“I haven’t changed that.”

She looked at me, and I wished I could unsay the small plea inside the joke. Then she passed me the cup.

The other three committee members were looking through the anniversary programme. Fenna had collected the printed copies on Monday as arranged, carrying them away in the square cardboard box I had saved for her. We had discussed the weather and a crease in the proof. Neither of us had mentioned Gethin.

Now the copies lay between us. Our names were printed together on the back, beneath a thank-you to the hall staff. I had aligned the two lines by eye because their different lengths made a measured centre look wrong.

I had brought a pen, my notebook and the desire to have this already over. Of the three, only the first was likely to help.

“Before we start,” I said, “I need to correct something I told Fenna.”

They looked up.

I explained the invented sound arrangement. I did not call it confusion. Gethin had never agreed to do anything at the anniversary; the hall had someone responsible; I had offered his usefulness because I was frightened of admitting I wanted him there as my guest.

The treasurer turned his pen between two fingers.

“You could just have booked a place.”

“Yes.”

“Under your name.”

“Yes. That would have been simpler.”

It was almost funny, reduced to the form. My bad behaviour had generated a whole conversation where a tick might have sufficed.

Fenna put her cup down.

“I’m not asking the committee to decide who Coralia can see. I do need us to decide who’s running the anniversary. I don’t think we can both do it this year.”

I had known the sentence was coming. I still felt it enter somewhere below my ribs.

The woman who arranged the music asked why the normal division of work wouldn’t do. Fenna answered without looking at me.

“Because I don’t trust us to settle a disagreement on the evening. And I don’t want either of us explaining the other to everyone who asks.”

“I can do my share,” I said.

“I know you can.”

“Then—“

“I don’t want another evening where you’ve told me something I have to discover the real meaning of later.”

I closed my notebook. There was nothing in it that could answer that.

The quietest member, who usually dealt with bookings, asked whether Gethin was even allowed to attend. The treasurer found the guest line on the form and read it. Members could bring one guest, space permitting. There was space. There had never been a rule about the group a guest danced with elsewhere.

“If you’re discussing an exception because it’s my invitation, I shouldn’t help decide it,” I said. “I’ll leave you to that part.”

I moved to the chairs stacked along the back wall. The room was small. I could hear every word, which made the gesture seem more solemn than it needed to be, but I wanted the others to have a conversation that did not keep glancing at my face for permission.

Nobody proposed a new rule. They agreed the ordinary one stood. Then the treasurer waved me back, looking embarrassed on behalf of the furniture.

I sat beside Fenna again.

There were sensible alternatives. We could divide the evening into shifts; someone else could handle disputes; I could remain in charge of the welcome while she hosted the dancing. Each sounded possible until I imagined myself performing it, watching her across the room, pretending a narrower title meant nothing had changed.

I nevertheless argued for sharing the evening. I did not want to surrender it gracefully just because that would make a better account of me later.

“We made this together,” I said. “I’d like us to finish this one together.”

Fenna’s eyes shone briefly. She looked down at the programme.

“I would have liked that too.”

In the end three wanted one host for the anniversary and two wanted to keep us both. I was one of the two. Fenna would host. I would attend as a member with my guest.

The decision did not remove me from the committee or erase the work I had done. These were facts I repeated to myself while the music organiser asked about the opening number.

I reached for my pen before remembering it was no longer my answer to give.

Fenna chose the slower tune. I would have chosen it too.

· · ·Scene break

Afterwards I carried my cup to the little sink. The treasurer offered to wash up, and I let him, though my hands wanted the hot water and something brief to finish.

Fenna was putting the programmes back in their box.

“They don’t need reprinting,” I said.

She looked at the names.

“I wasn’t going to. You did the work.”

“I can check the final changes to the running order. If you send them.”

“Friday?”

“All right. I’ll mark them. You decide what goes in.”

She nodded. It was a task with an end, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps twenty. I could see the whole of it. I had become so used to jobs with no visible edge that I almost did not recognise this one.

“Do you want a lift?” she asked.

I did. I wanted to sit in her car as though we were going back to our usual week. I also knew I was close to crying and that, if I cried beside her, she would have to decide whether to comfort me for a choice she had just made.

“I’ll walk. Thank you.”

“It’s getting cold.”

“I’ve got my coat.”

She waited while I put it on. Then we left by separate doors, hers to the car park and mine to the street.

At the crossing I stood through a green light without noticing it. A cyclist said, “You going?” and I waved him on, then crossed on the next one.

Gethin had sent a message earlier: Here if you want to ring. No report required.

I wanted to hear him. I also resented that the first person I wanted was part of the reason I had lost something. That was unfair, and knowing it did not make it disappear.

I called from a bench by the closed library.

“It’s Fenna,” I said when he answered. “She’s hosting on her own.”

He was quiet a moment.

“I’m sorry.”

“The guest arrangement stands. You can still come.”

“All right.”

A bus hissed at the stop across the road. I watched the driver lean towards a passenger, unable to hear the question.

“At least you can have an evening without—“ Gethin began.

“Don’t.”

He stopped.

“Don’t tell me how lovely it will be to have a rest. I wanted to do it. Some of it. I wanted to stand beside her and see it full.”

“I was going to say without worrying about everybody.”

“I will still worry. I’ll just have no authority to improve things.”

The laugh that escaped me was unpleasant. I pressed my sleeve against my face.

“I voted to stay,” I told him. “I wasn’t noble.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to vote yourself out of something you wanted.”

“I thought I might feel better than this.”

“I’m sorry I started finding the good part before you’d told me the bad one.”

I sat back against the bench. His admission let the anger leave without my having to apologise for all of it.

“Thank you.”

“Would you like company?”

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

It was tempting to ask him to come. I could imagine waiting until his shape appeared under the lamps, being allowed to lean against him, turning the evening into an arrival instead of an absence.

“Not tonight,” I said. “I want to go home and be cross without anyone watching.”

“Thursday still?”

“Yes. Very much Thursday.”

His breath changed at the other end. I was glad I had said the second part.

“I bought ingredients.”

“Ambitious.”

“Two of them may even go together.”

I wiped my cheek again. “Tell me something about your day that isn’t this.”

He told me about a timetable he had printed with Sunday at both ends of the week. Nobody had noticed until a driver said he would happily work it. I laughed properly then, because Gethin was annoyed with himself and the driver had evidently enjoyed it.

We talked until my hands grew cold. At my gate I told him I was home, and he said goodnight without trying to come the rest of the way with me.

Inside, I hung up my coat. The flat was quiet, but it was my quiet. I made tea and ate a piece of bread with cheese, sitting down for both. Then I opened my notebook to the anniversary page.

There were tasks written beneath my name. Some I had finished; some now belonged to someone else. I crossed out the ones I would not do, slowly, with a ruler because I had no intention of becoming an entirely different woman by bedtime.

At the bottom I wrote the one thing I still needed to arrange.

A place for my coat. A chair I could return to when the dance ended.