The Fuel Book

Arden drew a line through Veda’s first total.

“You’ve taken out three days’ fuel,” she said. “You haven’t taken out three days’ wages.”

“I know.”

“Then why is it written like this?”

Because Veda had wanted the answer to be different before Arden arrived. Because she had been able to speak clearly in the public room and had mistaken that for being ready to look at the arithmetic alone. Because a pencil made a comforting grey mark over the word impossible.

She pulled the sheet towards her. “Start again.”

They sat in the little office behind the gear shed on Thursday morning. Morrow was alongside; this time had been set aside and paid for. The fuel book, maintenance estimates and last year’s sales were spread across the table. Roscoe did not know the figures and had not been asked to know them.

The first option was more distance, keeping a similar pattern on grounds outside the proposed line. Fuel rose. Weather took more days. Other boats worked there already. Veda would not budget as though their pots would politely disappear.

The second was fewer fishing days. Receipts fell faster than costs.

The third was selling Morrow.

She had written that one very small.

Arden turned the sheet around and read it without comment. Veda appreciated that almost as much as she hated needing it.

“I don’t want to sell,” she said.

“I know.”

“I could keep fishing while we wait. Nothing’s changed legally.”

“No. But I need to know what you’re offering me when it does.”

Veda looked at her crew member. Arden wore a faded black jumper with a neat repair at the elbow. She had brought her own lunch and a list of questions. None of them concerned whether she approved of Veda’s love life.

“How long can you wait?”

“For an answer? A couple of weeks. Not for certainty about the authority. For your plan.”

“That isn’t long.”

“It isn’t a deadline I’ve invented to hurt you. It’s when another job needs an answer.”

Veda sat back.

“The chandlery dispatch place?”

“Yes. Full-time. Shore hours. Proper offer, subject to the usual references.”

“How long have you been looking?”

“A month.”

Before the first kiss. Before there had been anything convenient to blame.

“You could have told me.”

“I could. I wanted an actual offer before I made it your worry.”

Veda looked at the three sheets. She could ask Arden to stay out of loyalty. Arden might even do it. The possibility made her ashamed enough to keep quiet until she could ask something better.

“What would you need to stay?”

“Hours you can pay me for. Not hours you hope you’ll be able to pay me for after a good week.”

They worked for another hour. When the figures became too familiar to mean anything, Arden made tea. Veda opened the window onto the smell of drying gear.

“What about you doing something ashore?” Arden asked.

Veda almost said she was a skipper, then heard the childishness of it. Skippers bought groceries. Skippers sometimes took other work. The title did not entitle her to arithmetic of a different kind.

“I used to do dispatch.”

“I know. You mention it every time something arrives in the wrong order.”

“There was a part-time notice at the cold store.”

“Ask about it.”

“Sixteen hours. Two days. It might fit.”

“It might. Ask.”

They made a fourth sheet. It was uglier than the others and less immediately impossible. Fewer pots, fewer days, relief crew paid per agreed trip, shore work with actual hours. The separate gear shed would have to go; so would the van she had kept because owning it felt more independent than booking shared transport. Some fixed costs could fall. Insurance, servicing and safety provision stayed.

Arden tapped the new sheet. “This still doesn’t give me a job.”

“No,” Veda said.

It was the first useful thing she had said about it all morning.

· · ·Scene break

That evening she met Roscoe at a café near his workshop. He rose when she came in, then stopped halfway between greeting her and trying to assess the day from her face.

“Bad?” he asked.

“Useful. Which is worse at present.”

He drew out a chair. She sat and put her bag beneath it.

“I don’t want solutions,” she said. “I want dinner and somebody pleased to see me.”

He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “The second is easy.”

She felt her shoulders lower.

They ordered. He told her about a delivery made to the wrong building, a table too large for the customer’s staircase, his own failure to ask for a photograph before agreeing to collect it. Veda laughed with the disproportionate relief of a woman who had spent the day being the only problem in her own head.

“You mean somebody asked you where to stand?”

“Several times. None of the suggestions was kind.”

She reached across the table for his hand. He turned it beneath hers.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m pleased to see you too.”

He kissed the tips of her fingers. There was something almost unbearable about receiving tenderness when she had not first made herself successful.

After dinner they walked through streets turning gold with evening. Outside a second-hand shop, a display of spectacularly bad lamps made Roscoe stop in professional distress.

“You could fix that,” Veda said, pointing to one shaped like a swan.

“I could unplug it.”

“Coward.”

He looked down at her, smiling, and she wanted the evening to widen. She wanted no accounts on a table tomorrow, no relief crew to find, no request hanging over Arden’s next month. She wanted him to take her home and make the world smaller for a while.

Instead she told him one piece of the truth she could share.

“I’m going to ask about shore work. Not because you were right. Because I need more than one way to pay my rent.”

He began to answer. She felt his hand tighten around hers, then loosen.

“What were you going to say?”

“That it sounds sensible.”

“Are you swallowing the speech that follows?”

“Yes.”

“Good man.”

“Don’t reward me too much. It was a very good speech.”

She laughed, and he drew her nearer, waiting for her to turn into his arms. The kiss had no audience she knew and no public meaning she wished to assign it. It was comfort, as requested. It was also desire, which had not consulted the accounts and continued to be unreasonable.

“Come in for tea?” he asked when they reached his gate.

“Only tea tonight. Early start.”

“Only tea.”

Inside, she sat at his kitchen table with her shoes off. He did not open a laptop or ask for her budget. He put a warm mug into her hands and sat beside her, close enough that their knees touched.

She told him she might try a smaller working pattern for a few days before committing to anything. He asked when, and whether she would want company afterwards. The questions were modest enough to let her remain the person making the plan.

“I’ll tell you,” she said.

Before she left, she kissed him with an enthusiasm that made him catch the edge of the table for balance.

“That,” he said when she let him breathe, “was beyond the tea agreement.”

“An amendment.”

He grinned. “Duly received.”

In her car, she rang the number from the cold-store notice and left a message asking about the job. Her voice sounded like her own. She was glad Roscoe had not been there to hear it.