The Long Way

Tressa arrived for their Sunday walk with a bag containing a waterproof, two apples and a lipstick she had not used in eight months. The apples were a defensible precaution. She had no intention of explaining the lipstick.

Elian was sitting on the wall outside the bakery, drinking coffee from a real cup. He stood when he saw her, then looked at the cup as if it had become a complication.

“You can finish it,” she said.

“I ordered it because I was early.”

“I didn’t think you’d brought your own crockery.”

She sat beside him. They had parted at her car on Friday after walking twice as far as either of them had admitted to intending. He had asked whether she was free on Sunday. She had answered before thinking about what she usually did on Sundays, then remembered that Selwyn was working and felt the unpleasant relief of somebody finding an alibi.

She had mentioned the swim to Selwyn yesterday, and he had asked whether Elian had complained about the tea. He hadn’t asked about the walk.

Today there was no pool, no activity that accounted for the invitation. Elian wore a dark green shirt open at the throat. She had chosen a blue dress with pockets, then changed into trousers because she did not know which way they would walk. Already she regretted allowing a footpath to settle the matter.

“Where did you have in mind?” he asked.

“The headland.”

“Right.”

It was an agreeable answer. His face was not quite agreeable.

“You don’t like it.”

“It’s a walk.”

“So is the supermarket car park, if you’re determined.”

He looked into his coffee.

“I find the lookout a bit disappointing.”

“The entire sea is there.”

“I know. There’s a lot of it.”

She began to laugh. “What were you expecting?”

“Something round the next corner. From the lookout you can see everything at once. I prefer the lower path.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“You suggested the headland.”

“I made a suggestion, Elian. I haven’t left it to you in my will.”

He put the empty cup on the bakery’s outside tray. When he came back he had stopped trying to look easy about it.

“Would you like the lower path?”

“Yes. I would also like you to say when you don’t want something.”

“Even if it’s the entire sea?”

“Especially then. I can’t arrange a smaller one.”

He offered her the inside of the pavement without making a ceremony of it. She took it, and they walked down through the streets towards the path that followed the curve of the bay.

It was not wild country. There were benches, dogs on leads and people with more elaborate walking equipment than the route required. Tressa liked that it asked nothing heroic of them. She had spent too many years accepting the notion that a pleasant afternoon ought to be improved by achievement.

At the first bend Elian stopped to let a cyclist pass and put one hand briefly behind her, not quite touching her back.

She noticed the absence of his touch as sharply as she would have noticed the touch itself.

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Deciding where I can stand.”

He lowered his hand. “You’re right. Sorry.”

No hurt retreat, no explanation of his good intentions. He went on beside her and asked whether the shoes were comfortable.

“That’s rather close to the same question.”

“It’s because mine aren’t. I’m hoping someone else has made a better choice.”

She glanced down. The leather at the back of his left shoe had folded inward.

“Sit down before it gets worse.”

“Now who’s doing it?”

“Yes, but I have excellent motives.”

He laughed and sat on the next bench. Tressa took out an apple while he sorted his shoe. She offered the second one. He accepted it and rubbed it on his shirt.

The bench faced a ragged strip of beach. Here the sea came in pieces: a pale triangle between rocks, a dark crease under the wall, a flash of light that was gone by the time she turned to it. She could see what he meant about the lookout. She did not intend to tell him too soon.

His phone vibrated on the bench between them.

Selwyn’s name appeared on the screen.

Tressa knew it was absurd to feel discovered. They were two adults eating apples in public. Her son had not called to demand coordinates.

Elian turned the phone over without reading the message.

“You can answer,” she said.

“It can wait.”

“Is everything all right?”

“As far as I know.”

That did not satisfy her. She heard her own question approaching before she had decided whether to ask it.

“He’s been rather tired. Has he said anything to you?”

Elian held the apple in both hands.

“I don’t think I can answer that.”

Heat rose into her face. “I wasn’t asking for secrets.”

“I know. But I can’t tell which bits would feel private to him.”

The waves made a soft, untidy noise against the stones. She had imagined the afternoon interrupted by embarrassment, perhaps by someone they knew. She had not imagined herself being the source of it.

“You could tell me if I needed to worry.”

“If I thought he needed help he couldn’t ask for, I would. This isn’t that.”

She looked at the water.

She could hear how her next sentence would sound before she said it: I’m his mother. She had been his mother for thirty-nine years. Elian had known him for five. The difference was real. It did not make every conversation Selwyn had the property of her concern.

“That was unfair,” she said.

“It wasn’t a terrible question.”

“It was the beginning of several.”

He smiled faintly. “I thought it might be.”

She took a bite of apple to give herself something to do. It was sourer than she had expected. The surprise made her eyes water, and she was grateful when Elian did not mistake it for emotion.

“That’s a vindictive apple,” he said.

She swallowed. “I chose them for the colour.”

“A warning for us all.”

They sat until she could look at him again without wanting to defend herself.

“Does he ask you about me?” she said.

Elian was quiet.

“You can’t answer that either,” she said.

“Not usefully.”

“Right.”

She folded the apple core into a tissue and put it in the pocket of her bag that always ended up containing things she had meant to throw away.

“I don’t want to be two people having a conversation round him,” she said. “That’s not what I asked you here for.”

“I didn’t come for that.”

She turned towards him.

He had finished his apple. There was nothing in his hands now, nothing to look at instead of her.

“Why did you come?”

“Because I wanted to spend an afternoon with you.”

“That’s a very safe answer.”

“It doesn’t feel safe.”

The path was busy enough that somebody passed every half minute. A woman carrying a folded umbrella went by, followed by an older man trying to open a paper bag without dropping what was inside. The world declined to give Tressa a private stage. She found she preferred that. Nobody had dimmed the lights or put on music to tell her what she was supposed to feel.

“I wanted that too,” she said.

“I know. Or I hoped.”

“I’m making rather heavy work of it.”

“A little.”

She laughed before she could be offended. “You could deny it.”

“You asked me to say when I didn’t want something. I don’t want to start with a lie that small.”

He was not smiling now. She felt the shape of the afternoon change, the way a room changed when somebody closed a door without shutting you in.

“Are we calling this a date?” she asked.

“I would like to.”

Her pulse made itself known in her throat. She looked down at her practical trousers and the bag with the waterproof poking out.

“I should have worn the dress.”

“Was there a dress?”

“There was a small debate.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“No, you’re not. It was mostly about whether I’d look as if I’d made an effort.”

“Would that be bad?”

She had no answer she liked.

Elian stood and held out a hand. He did not pull her up before she had chosen to take it. His palm was warm, his fingers rough along one side, and for a moment she left her hand in his after she was on her feet.

He looked at their hands, then at her.

“Shall we walk?”

“Yes.”

They went on holding hands.

It was an ordinary thing. She had seen hundreds of people do it and had done it herself, in another life, until that life had ceased to feel like one she inhabited. After the divorce she had dated a few men. None had been a catastrophe. One had wanted her to organise his holiday. Another had been kind and not wanted her enough for either of them to survive dinner without being overly polite.

Elian moved his thumb once over hers. It was not polite. It was a small, unmistakable admission that he knew he was touching her.

At the far end of the path they climbed the steps to a café. She washed the apple juice from her fingers and looked at her face in the mirror over the basin. She put on the lipstick. Then she wiped a little off, annoyed at herself, and put it back.

When she returned, he was standing beside a table outside, waiting to see whether she preferred the shade.

“Sun,” she said. “While we’ve got it.”

They ate toasted sandwiches and argued about whether gulls knew the café’s opening hours. He told her about a border he was planting at work and stopped himself halfway through an explanation.

“What?” she said.

“It’s not especially interesting.”

“Then make it interesting. You’re the one who brought it up.”

He did. Not by pretending the work was noble, but by describing a colleague who could predict which plants the public would walk through by which ones he had spent longest choosing. She laughed hard enough to spill a little tea.

When they stood to leave, Elian reached for her hand again. This time there was no practical reason for offering it.

She took it before he could find one.

At her car he stayed on the pavement while she unlocked the door. She turned back and found him nearer than she had expected, though still far enough away that she could decide what the nearness meant.

She wanted to kiss him. The wanting was so plain that it almost steadied her.

Then a car passed, and she thought of Selwyn’s phone lighting up on the bench. Not his permission. The fact that there were things she could do with somebody he trusted that would alter the shape of that trust.

Elian saw her hesitate.

“Wednesday?” he asked.

She was grateful, then irritated by the gratitude. She did not want him to become a man rewarded for never asking for enough.

“The pool,” she said. “And then my house. If you’d like that.”

“I would.”

“There will be proper tea.”

“That isn’t the main attraction.”

He said it gently, without making the sentence smaller.

Tressa kept her hand in his a moment longer. Then she let go because she had chosen to, and got into the car with the lipstick still on.