Where the River Narrows

Dear Maeve,

I stopped Roscoe Sayer on the quay and asked whether he had come to disagree with me or to kiss me. He said the second. It would have been convenient if he had been bad at it.

I am forty-six. I own a fishing boat, I pay my crew and I know which conversations can wait until we’re safely back alongside. Apparently I can also lose my good sense over a man wearing a campaign badge.

Roscoe is forty-four. He restores furniture. In his spare time he argues for a recovery area across the estuary grounds that help keep my boat working. He’s a volunteer; he doesn’t set the rules. Unfortunately, that leaves me with no sensible explanation for wanting him quite so much.

We knew where we stood before the kiss. Neither of us offered to move.

He asked me to Sunday lunch somewhere we wouldn’t be expected to make a speech. I wore a green dress and took my earrings off because I thought they made it too obvious that I wanted him to notice. He noticed anyway.

At lunch he asked what I liked about fishing. People have asked about my figures, my alternatives and my willingness to adapt. I wasn’t ready for that question. I told him how the boat settles after a turn, how some mornings I know where I am in my hands before I check it with my eyes. He didn’t turn it into a lesson about transferable skills.

Then he invited me to his workshop. He had labelled a chair leg LEFT REAR, which was a serious mistake around a woman with my level of maturity. I made him laugh. I liked that almost as much as I liked kissing him.

He showed me a repair that looked handsome and didn’t fit. He put it aside. I found that more disarming than if he’d shown me something perfect.

I have been imagining considerably more than a workshop visit. I told him so. He wasn’t shocked. We did establish that a workbench is an unsuitable place to pursue certain ambitions, and went for a walk instead.

On the walk I asked whether he wanted me as I was or as someone he hoped I’d become. He didn’t promise never to hope I’d change my mind. I couldn’t honestly promise that either.

I want his hands on me. I want to hear him laugh in a room where neither of us represents anybody. I also want my work, my boat and the particular life I’ve made here.

I can say all of that plainly to you. I’m trying to learn whether I can keep saying it when he is close enough to kiss.