The Harbour Wall

Roscoe arrived wearing the coat Veda had told him to bring, just as her phone announced that the harbour launch would not be sailing.

“The skipper’s cancelled,” she said. “Wind at the mouth.”

He looked past her to the strip of water visible between the houses. “It looks quiet from here.”

“That’s why he’s the skipper.”

“Fair.”

She had bought two tickets for the afternoon trip because she wanted to show him the estuary from the water without turning Morrow into a pleasure boat. Friends were not spare crew, and her working boat was not set up for romantic passenger excursions. The launch had its own skipper, passenger arrangements and decisions. Today its decision was no.

Veda felt a foolish amount of disappointment. She had imagined standing beside Roscoe at the rail, pointing out the bend where the light changed, letting him see something that could not fit into a speech.

He unzipped his coat. “What would you like to do instead?”

“You don’t have to stay.”

“I didn’t come here to avoid spending time with you.”

She looked at him. He waited, neither wounded nor trying to tease her out of the feeling.

“I wanted to show you something I’m good at.”

“You already have.”

“Don’t.”

His smile appeared. “I was thinking of lunch.”

“Liar.”

He laughed, and she let him in.

It was Saturday, almost a week after the public session. Veda had completed an interview at the cold store the previous day, discovered that dispatch software had changed since she last used it, and found that she could still make sense of it. She was waiting to hear. She did not want to spend another day waiting beautifully beside her phone.

“We could walk,” she said. “Not down to the mouth. Upstream.”

“I brought the correct coat.”

“So you did.”

They took sandwiches and followed the path above the reed beds, where the gusts arrived in pieces between the trees. He asked about the boat trip she had planned, and she told him what she had meant to point out. Without the view in front of her, the account became less polished and more personal.

She described a buoy she disliked because from one angle it resembled a man raising his hand to ask an unnecessary question. Roscoe wanted to know whether she had ever answered it.

“Frequently. Nothing fit for public minutes.”

They sat on a sheltered wall and ate their sandwiches. Hers had too much mustard. He offered to exchange, which she declined because she had made it and felt responsibility ought to count for something.

“Always?” he asked.

“No. Occasionally it should count as a warning.”

He smiled. There was mustard on his thumb. She watched him wipe it on the paper and remembered other, slower ways he had touched her. Wanting him outdoors in a perfectly ordinary conversation had become a recurring inconvenience.

She asked about the last time he had taken a day off without arranging something useful.

“Last summer. Three days walking.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Was that what you wanted?”

He considered it. “For the first day.”

She turned towards him. He kept looking at the river.

“I like being alone. People hear that and assume I don’t get lonely. On the second evening I found a place I wanted to show somebody, and there wasn’t anybody to ring who would have understood why I was ringing.”

“Where?”

“A little village above a valley. Nothing exceptional. There was a table outside a bakery. I thought it would be good to sit there with someone who didn’t need me to explain why we weren’t going anywhere else.”

She folded the sandwich paper.

“I’ve been that person at a table.”

“Which person?”

“The one wanting to stay and pretending she didn’t mind moving.”

He glanced at her. She told him about the man she had lived with in her thirties, the affection that had lasted longer than their compatible ambitions. He had wanted movement, a succession of plans that proved life was improving. She had wanted to become more deeply attached to a place. Neither had been cruel. They had still made each other lonely.

“Do you speak?”

“Christmas. Birthdays sometimes. He’s married now. I’m glad.”

Roscoe nodded, accepting the past without trying to become its correction.

“And you?”

“A relationship ended four years ago. We were both adults who had become very good at not asking for things.”

“Are you better at it now?”

He looked at her hand. “I’m asking if you’d like to come closer.”

She did.

They stayed on the wall until the sandwiches were gone and the temperature made sitting still less attractive than moving. On the walk home they argued, with genuine feeling and no public consequence, about whether a house could contain too many books. Veda said a staircase should remain a staircase. Roscoe said this was a narrow view of architecture.

At her house they attempted flatbreads because she had flour and he claimed to remember how. The first stuck. The second resembled an outlying territory. They ate both with roasted vegetables and yoghurt, standing at the counter because clearing the table would have required moving their failed dough.

“Your expertise has limits,” she said.

“Quite extensive ones.”

She fed him a torn piece of the third, which was better. He caught her wrist and kissed the flour from her knuckle, then released her hand and waited.

Veda set down the plate.

“Stay tonight.”

“Yes.”

He said it with such immediate happiness that she wanted to hold his face and make him say it again. Instead she kissed him, tasting yoghurt and warmth, laughing when he backed into the counter.

“Better furniture upstairs,” she said.

“An important criterion.”

They cleaned enough to leave the kitchen safe, then went up together. She liked showing him her room: the lamp that worked only when its switch was pressed firmly, the window she preferred open, the side of the bed she had occupied alone for years without deciding whether it was a preference or a habit.

“Which side?” he asked.

“This one. For now.”

“For now,” he agreed.

They kissed standing beside the bed, then sitting on it, her hands moving beneath his open shirt because she wanted the living warmth of him against her palms. He held her gaze when she drew him down with her. The afternoon’s laughter stayed with them; it made room for the quieter sounds, the small admissions of pleasure, the ease with which she could ask for what she wanted.

Afterwards she lay against him while the wind moved the curtain. She had shown him no impressive view. He had seen her bad bread and heard about a holiday somebody else would not take slowly. She felt more wanted than if she had given him a perfect day.

“Breakfast,” she said drowsily.

“I support it.”

“Arden’s coming at nine to collect the spare drill. I said I’d lend it for her shelves.”

He lifted his head. “Would you like me to go before?”

“No. I’d like you to stay and eat breakfast. I wanted you to know.”

He kissed her shoulder. “Then I will.”

In the morning Arden arrived to find Roscoe washing a saucepan while Veda searched for the drill charger.

“Morning,” Arden said to him.

“Morning.”

“She’s lent me this thing twice without a charger. Be warned.”

“I keep my own tools,” he said.

“Sound policy.”

Veda found the charger behind the toaster and declined to explain its location. Arden accepted the drill, drank half a cup of tea and left for her own Sunday.

There had been no announcement. No joke at the expense of their night. Roscoe was still there when the door closed, sleeves rolled, soap on one wrist.

Veda went to him and kissed that wrist.

“What was that for?”

“Being here after the door.”

He put down the cloth and drew her close. Outside, the cancelled trip remained cancelled. Their day had happened anyway.