The Drawer

Tressa found a space for Elian’s things by taking out three scarves she had not worn in years. Then she put the scarves back.

It was the third Saturday in October. He would be here in half an hour, and she had decided that the increasingly familiar bag beside her bedroom chair was an absurd arrangement. A drawer was not a proposal of marriage. Neither was it nothing. She had begun by making space and ended by wondering whether she was about to present him with another practical fact which concealed a question.

She shut the drawer and went downstairs.

The week between their Friday evening and this Saturday had been ordinary in ways she was beginning to value. She had swum twice, once alone. Elian had met her former colleague for coffee and disagreed with her about whether an old chestnut tree should have been removed from a nearby street. Tressa had listened with a pleasure neither required her to explain. Her friend liked him enough to argue. Elian liked her enough not to concede merely because he was new.

Selwyn had telephoned twice. They had discussed the gate repair and a book he had borrowed. The application had not come up. She was learning that an unanswered question could remain in a house without becoming the purpose of every room.

Elian arrived carrying bread, as requested, and a bag which looked too large for one shirt.

“Have you brought the washing?”

“A jumper. There was a disagreement about whether I would need it. I lost.”

“To whom?”

“The weather forecast.”

She kissed him and took the loaf. He left the bag by the stairs, where it looked like an invitation to return to the subject she had postponed.

They were going to walk to a walled garden on the other side of town, eat lunch there and come back whenever they wanted. Nothing was booked. It was the sort of plan Tressa would once have treated as easily moved because there was no receipt to prove its value.

Elian checked his phone while she found her coat, then put it away.

“I should tell you something,” he said. “I’ve kept today. Selwyn asked about a walk, and I said I already had plans.”

Her hand paused on the coat hook.

“You could have—“

She stopped. He waited without smiling.

“You could have chosen either thing,” she said. “That’s what I ought to have said.”

“Yes. I chose this.”

“Did you say you were seeing me?”

“Yes. I didn’t say you wouldn’t let me change it.”

She felt herself flush. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I know. I’m telling you what I wanted to get right.”

She took down her coat. There were questions she would have liked to ask about how the reply had been received. Elian’s face told her enough about his own feeling: a little sadness, no request that she reward the decision by being exceptionally delightful.

“Thank you for keeping our day,” she said.

“I wanted our day.”

She went to him and kissed his cheek. “Then we’d better start it. I intend to have several opinions about the garden.”

“I was afraid of that.”

· · ·Scene break

The garden charged a small entrance fee and offered a map which Tressa put in her pocket after deciding they could hardly get lost inside four walls. Elian asked to see it anyway.

“Do you need instructions?”

“I like knowing what somebody intended. Then I can disagree.”

He studied the map, pointed out a path that looped back on itself and chose it. Tressa went beside him through a border full of seed heads and leaves whose colour had become more interesting as their edges failed. The garden was not trying to look like summer. She liked it better for that.

At a low greenhouse Elian stopped to look through the glass. Tressa sat on a bench in the sun. There was space for him beside her; he did not immediately take it. She watched him read a plant label and return to the door to look again.

“You can go in,” she called.

“Will you come?”

“In a minute. I’m enjoying sitting down without having earned it.”

He grinned and went inside. She closed her eyes. For several minutes she thought about nothing except warmth on her face and the distant scrape of a wheelbarrow.

When he came back he sat beside her with a fallen leaf in his hand.

“For the machinery?” he asked, offering it.

“You think my paintings need a change of subject.”

“I think you might like the colour.”

She took it. A dark red line ran through the yellow. She held it against her coat and imagined how badly she could misunderstand it with paint.

“I do,” she said.

They sat without speaking. Then she asked about the drawer.

Not gracefully. She began, “Your bag,” and he looked so puzzled that she had to start again.

“Would you like somewhere to leave a few things? At my house. A drawer, perhaps. Or a shelf.”

He turned towards her.

“Would you like that?”

“Yes. But I thought I should ask before rearranging the furniture around an answer you hadn’t given.”

He looked down at the map. “I’d like a drawer.”

The pleasure she felt was too large for the object. She let herself feel it anyway.

“It doesn’t mean—“

“I know it doesn’t mean I live there.”

“I was going to say it doesn’t mean you have to leave your things every time.”

He smiled. “That too.”

She looked across the path at a tree tied to a support with a broad strip of fabric. Somebody had left enough slack for it to move.

“I like having you there,” she said. “I like the signs that you’ve been. I don’t want to start disguising that as efficiency.”

Elian’s hand closed over hers on the bench.

“Then I’ll leave a shirt because I expect to come back.”

“Good.”

“And I’d like you to leave something at mine. If you want. Not as an exchange.”

She considered. Her own little bag, the one she took when she stayed at his flat, always came home with her. She had been scrupulous about leaving no evidence he might have to explain. He had never asked her to.

“My swimming things,” she said. “A spare set. That would be useful.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“And I’d like seeing them there,” she added.

“Better.”

She laughed and leaned against him. He kissed the side of her head where she had rested it near his shoulder. She was glad they had come somewhere without knowing what it would give them.

At lunch she ordered the soup and he ordered an omelette. They shared neither out of politeness, although she stole a piece of his bread after asking. The café radio played too loudly near their table. He asked whether they could move instead of enduring it, and she went with him to a quieter corner.

It was a small thing, almost beneath notice. It pleased her as much as the drawer.

· · ·Scene break

At home she took out the three scarves again, this time while Elian stood in the doorway and watched.

“Are they being evicted?”

“Rehoused. I have a box.”

“Are you sure?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “I have made a decision about scarves before.”

“Right. Sorry.”

He was smiling. She put the scarves on top of the wardrobe and opened the empty drawer. He brought up his bag and took out a folded shirt, socks and the jumper which had won its argument with the weather.

“The jumper can hang up,” she said.

“It likes to know where the rest of its party is.”

He put it in the drawer. She liked his mild resistance, the way he could make himself present without letting her organise every inch of him.

When he shut the drawer she touched his wrist.

“Come here.”

He turned. She kissed him slowly, with the empty bag still in his other hand. He dropped it beside the chair and put his arms around her. There was no novelty in being in her bedroom now. The familiarity made the wanting stronger: she knew the sound he would make when she touched his face, the place at his shoulder where she liked to rest her forehead, the care with which he would wait if she drew back.

She drew back only far enough to see him.

“I’m pleased you’re here.”

“I can tell.”

“I might say it more often anyway.”

“I won’t object.”

His mouth found hers again after she moved towards him. She let the kiss deepen, her hands holding him close, and felt the answer in his embrace. He was not an arrival she had to justify. He was Elian, with his inconveniently exact opinions and his bag on her floor, wanting her with a seriousness she was beginning to trust even when neither of them had said anything clever.

They stayed upstairs while the afternoon light thinned. There was time to ask, time to change their minds about a lamp or a window, time for laughter to interrupt without ending what it interrupted. Tressa liked the weight of his hand in hers, the warmth of his shoulder, the sound of her own name spoken without any request attached.

Later, with the quilt over them, she watched him notice the northern-islands book on the bedside table.

“You found a map?” he asked.

“Several. They disagree with each other.”

“Promising.”

“I’ve been looking at next summer. And something smaller before that. Perhaps in winter.”

“How small?”

She turned towards him. She could have said they would discuss it later. They would, but she did not want later to mean when she had already arranged the question to contain only one attractive answer.

“I don’t know yet. I want to ask what you would like.”

He rested his head on the pillow, considering.

“Not everywhere,” he said at last.

“That reduces the field considerably.”

“And not all at once.”

She smiled, then saw that he was serious.

“We should talk about it tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes.”

He reached for her hand. They had made room for a shirt today. Neither pretended it had settled the size of their future.