Chapter 1 — Opening scene
Eliza had taken the drawer out before remembering that the knives were in it.
“Put it down,” Edda said.
“I'm holding it.”
“That is what concerns me.”
He lowered it onto the kitchen table. A spoon slid against the bread knife. From beneath the folded cloth came a rolling sound, followed by an onion.
“I wondered where that went,” Edda said.
“How long?”
“Before you began offering to repair the drawer.”
Sera caught the onion before it reached the floor. She put it beside his notebook.
“Keep those together. They have a similar effect on your eyes.”
The kettle began making a noise that required Edda to leave him alone with the damage. He knelt beside the empty runners. The left one had worked loose. It was a small repair, which made the length of time he had taken to arrive difficult to explain.
Through the open kitchen door he could hear Jory at the basin. Daven had let him finish the paid repair he was working on before coming over. Aven arrived a few minutes later, carrying a heel of bread wrapped in paper.
“I've eaten,” she said when Edda reached for another plate. “I'm bringing this back.”
“Was there something wrong with it?”
“You gave me a loaf. I live by myself.”
Edda looked at the piece.
“You could have kept that much.”
“Then you would have given me another loaf.”
Edda took the paper and cut the bread into six pieces.
Daven came last, with the small book in which he had written what a visit to assess another room would cost. He put it down where the drawer had been.
“Don't move that,” he told Eliza.
“I wasn't going to.”
“You say that about things just before nobody sees them again.”
Eliza tightened the runner. The screwdriver slipped once. He stopped, changed the angle and tried again.
When the drawer went back, it closed almost all the way.
Edda looked at the last finger's width.
“We can have our meeting,” she said. “But you aren't leaving.”
They sat with the drawer beside them refusing to become a completed task.
Eliza opened his notebook. At the top of the page he had written THIRD ROOM. Beneath it were the things that still needed checking.
The possible room was Edda's front room. She had offered to let someone assess it, after warning him twice that an offer to look was not an offer to hand it over. It held her winter chair, two boxes of books and the little table she moved toward the window when the afternoon light was good.
Lina, who had asked Eliza about somewhere to live, wanted an answer before she went to see another room that evening.
He had told her they would talk today.
That had sounded a useful thing to be able to tell someone.
“Daven?” he said.
Daven opened the small book.
The first price was for a visit and a written assessment. It did not include work. Whoever came would need to consider the access, the wall where a separate door might go, and whether the room could be used for sleeping at all.
“I can look at the timber,” Jory said. “That doesn't mean I can tell you the rest is right.”
Eliza crossed out the word repairs and wrote assessment above it.
Edda read the figure.
“And that comes from where?”
He had brought the repair-fund account. He pushed it across, then saw her expression and left his hand on the page.
“There's enough in it,” he said.
“For the two rooms.”
“Yes.”
“If something goes wrong in one of them next week?”
The kitchen was quiet except for Daven pulling a piece of bread apart.
Eliza drew the account back.
“Then there might not be enough.”
“I've got two people paying me to keep their rooms working. I can't give you the money set aside for that and ask them to wait until someone feels generous again.”
“Nor can we move the money left from the first work,” Sera said. “Not without asking the people who gave it for that purpose.”
He had known both things when he opened the book. Seeing a sufficient number on a page had made him want them to mean something else.
He turned to the next sheet.
“We could show people what has been done. An afternoon. Give them the accounts, let them see—”
“Which rooms?” Aven asked.
He looked up.
“People's rooms?”
“Only if you wanted to.”
“I don't.”
“Then we wouldn't.”
“I've only just stopped keeping the bed clear in case somebody comes in.”
Jory looked at her, then away.
Eliza closed the sheet over the account.
“The spending can be shown without that.”
“Yes,” she said. “You can tell them the door shuts. They don't need to watch me shut it.”
Edda reached behind her for the bread board. The drawer caught her sleeve. She freed it without looking at Eliza.
Daven tapped his book.
“We could have a repair afternoon at the workshop. If anyone wants to bring a job and pay for it.”
“Whose afternoon?” Jory asked.
“Mine to offer,” Daven said. “Not yours.”
“I want the work. I also want to know when I'm working.”
“So do I,” Aven said.
“We'd agree the hours and pay before putting anything out,” Daven answered. “If it makes anything after costs, we decide then what part can go toward a visit. I haven't done the sums.”
He wrote something beneath the figure.
“And it can't be during Neri's collection time.”
“No,” Eliza said.
No one suggested asking her to change it.
Jory took the pencil when Daven offered it and put a question beside the proposed hours. He had somewhere he wanted to go that afternoon. He didn't say where.
Eliza found himself wondering, then went back to his own page.
“I'll speak to the people who gave the earlier money,” he said.
“You can ask,” Sera said. “Some will want it used exactly as they agreed. Some may have nothing more to give.”
He wrote it.
“There's something else,” Edda said.
She nodded toward the front room.
“Suppose it can be done. Where am I sitting in winter?”
Eliza looked at the door. In his notebook the room had become a space large enough for a bed. He could see the chair through the gap now, with a book lying open on its arm.
“You don't have to give it up.”
“I want it considered before somebody works out the cheapest place to put my books.”
He drew a line through the small rectangle he had made beside the notes.
“Would you still want the assessment?”
“I want to know what it would mean. Then I want to think. Those are two different visits.”
“All right.”
“Don't look so relieved. I haven't agreed to either price yet.”
They finished with no money moved and no date for a third room. Daven would get the proposed assessment set out in writing, including what it would and would not answer. Edda would consider letting the person in. The workshop afternoon still needed sums and willing people.
Eliza had a shorter list than when he arrived. It contained more work.
“Lina is coming,” he said.
“Does she know there's nothing ready?” Aven asked.
“She knows we're looking.”
“Those can sound close together when you need somewhere.”
He looked at the clock. There was time to go to the front gate before she reached the door.
Edda put his screwdriver beside the onion.
“Afterward.”
Lina arrived carrying a small plant in a dented tin. She held it level while she closed the gate with her foot.
“Mint,” she said, seeing him look. “It falls over if I put it in the bag.”
He took a breath.
“I'm sorry. We haven't got a room to offer you.”
She stopped beside the gate.
“Not this one?”
“We don't yet know if it can be made into one. We haven't agreed the money for finding out.”
She looked past him toward the window.
“I thought today's talk was about when.”
“I should have made that clearer.”
She shifted the tin to her other hand. A little water ran across her fingers.
“I've got another place to see.”
“You should go.”
“I wasn't asking permission.”
“No.”
He moved away from the gate.
“If we get an answer, would you want me to tell you?”
She thought about it.
“Yes. Ask me then. I might have found something.”
“I will.”
“And don't put my name down as somebody waiting.”
He opened the notebook and showed her the page. He had written her name beneath the conversation time. He crossed out the words to ask about room and wrote ask whether she still wants to hear.
She watched him finish.
“I don't need you to write all that.”
“I do.”
For a moment she almost smiled. Then she lifted the tin and went back through the gate. The mint brushed her cuff.
Eliza stood where she had left him until the gate clicked shut.
When he returned, Aven and Jory had gone. Daven's book was no longer on the table. Edda was putting away the cups, opening the drawer by pulling its handle slightly to the right.
“You've learned how it works,” he said.
“I learned that before I asked you to fix it.”
He pulled out the drawer again. This time he emptied it first. Beneath the cloth lay a small flat screw, the one he should have noticed before adding another.
Sera stayed beside the table while he worked.
“I'm walking to the market,” she said. “If you're finished in ten minutes, come.”
He set the loose screw in his palm. There were still people to ask, prices to obtain, and Lina walking somewhere he could not make better by catching up with her.
The screw he had added stood proud of the runner. He exchanged it for the flat one, checked the other side and put the drawer back.
It shut.
Edda opened it, then shut it herself.
“That,” she said, “is finished.”
Eliza put the screwdriver away. He washed the dust off his hands and took the onion to the kitchen shelf before going to find his coat.
Chapter 2 — The Other End of the Table
Sera wanted a bowl.
Eliza discovered this after offering to carry potatoes, which she had not bought, and bread, which she did not need.
“What sort of bowl?”
“I'll know when I see it.”
He considered the stalls ahead of them. There were bowls at three of them, possibly four if the things stacked beside the boots were not hats.
“Does it need to be a particular size?”
“Come and look with me.”
He went with her.
At the first stall she picked up a white bowl, ran a finger around its rim and put it down. At the second, the seller explained at length why the green one was worth more than the blue one. Sera preferred the blue one but bought neither.
Eliza began enjoying himself when he understood that they could look at something without coming away responsible for it.
Then a woman behind a vegetable stall called to him.
“You work with the man who mends chairs?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is he any good with a table?”
Sera looked at him.
“That is a question about the table,” he said.
“You're making your volunteering face.”
The woman had lifted one corner of the cloth. Beneath it, a folded piece of packing card filled the gap between a table leg and the paving.
“Nelda,” she said. “If you're going to tell him, he'll need to know whose.”
Eliza crouched. The table stood in two separate folding sections. One was steady. The other shifted when Nelda put a hand against its edge.
“It used to be the ground,” she said. “Now it does it indoors.”
He could see a loose bolt and a dark line beside the hinge. He reached toward the bolt, then stopped. The little spanner in his coat pocket would fit it. He had put it there weeks ago for a different job and found it every time he wanted a handkerchief.
“I can ask Daven to look.”
“How long?”
“I don't know yet.”
She let the cloth fall.
“I use it every market day. He can't keep it a week and then tell me he needs another week.”
“I'll tell him that.”
“And ask what it costs before he starts.”
Sera pointed at the gap beside the steady table.
“Could you manage with that one while he looks?”
Nelda examined the produce spread across both sections.
“With less on it.”
They helped move the shallow crates. Nelda knew which could be stacked and which would leave her trying to sell bruised pears. Eliza followed instructions. When they finished, the doubtful table stood empty behind her, folded against a crate so nobody could put anything on it.
Nelda gave him her name on the corner of a paper bag and the days she could spare the table.
“Bring his answer tomorrow. I'll still have it.”
He put the paper in his notebook. Beside it was the list of people he needed to ask about the earlier contributions. He closed the book without adding Nelda to that list.
At the next stall, Sera found a yellow bowl with a blue brush mark inside it. The seller turned it over to show her the base. She held it at arm's length, brought it close again and smiled.
“That one?” Eliza asked.
“That one.”
She paid, then allowed him to carry it while she fastened her coat.
It was wider than he had expected and surprisingly light. Through the wrapping he could feel the ridge beneath its foot.
“What are you putting in it?”
“I haven't decided.”
They stopped at the eating stall and shared a hot bun, pulling it apart over the paper so they would not lose the middle. Sera took back the bowl when he tried to balance it on his knee.
For a while they talked about a man arguing with a pigeon over a seat. The man had the stronger claim. The pigeon seemed prepared to wait longer.
Eliza left his notebook in his pocket.
The following morning, Daven took longer to unfold Nelda's table than Eliza had taken to promise an answer.
Nelda had brought it to the workshop before opening her stall. Daven had offered to examine it without charge, with any repair waiting for a price she accepted. She had agreed and gone back to work. Aven wrote her name on a job sheet, then found the paper bag because Eliza had copied one of the available days so badly that neither of them trusted it.
Jory bent beside the hinge.
“Did you tighten this?” he asked Eliza.
“No.”
“Good.”
He pointed. The dark line continued beneath the metal plate, following the grain out toward the edge. One bolt had already pulled partway into the timber.
“Would tightening it make that worse?” Aven asked.
“Might hold it still long enough to split the rest.”
Daven supported the folding frame while Jory eased the plate off. A thin piece of wood came away with it.
Eliza took the spanner out of his pocket and put it on the bench.
“Yours,” he told Daven.
Daven looked at it.
“I've been looking for that.”
“I've been meaning to give it back.”
“Leave it here. I'll need it.”
Aven lifted the job sheet.
“What do I put for the work?”
Daven gave her the repair he expected: a sound mounting piece, refitting the hinge, then a test with the sort of load Nelda actually used. He would give Nelda a price before doing the repair.
“Does the new piece go in here?” Aven asked.
Jory picked up a short offcut from the bench and held it against the old mounting. She turned the sheet sideways and drew the shape, leaving space for the holes.
“Not that close to the end,” he said.
She moved the pencil mark.
“And you need room to fold it.”
He brought the leg halfway in. The corner crossed her second mark.
“Right.”
She rubbed it out and tried again.
Daven waited while Jory showed her the movement a second time. Then he took the sheet, checked the measurements and added the time.
“That much?” Aven asked.
“Finding the trouble counts. Making the piece counts. Taking it apart and putting it back counts.”
“I thought I'd missed a bit.”
“Usually I have.”
He added the check under load.
Jory smiled and reached for the other hinge.
There were already jobs waiting on the far bench. A cabinet door lay beside three chair seats. Someone had brought in a box whose lid would not close, with a note asking them not to lose the little brass catch.
Daven moved the box away from Eliza's elbow.
“Do you have Nelda's answer?” Eliza asked.
“Price and when she can collect it, once I know whether the second side needs the same work. Come back before you go to the market.”
Jory put a shallow tray beneath the table for the screws. Eliza handed him the one that had rolled toward the edge.
On the wall above them, Daven had pinned a page headed REPAIR AFTERNOON. Beneath it were the proposed hours and two columns of figures.
The paper was crossed out so often it looked used rather than hopeful.
“Have you worked it out?” Eliza asked.
“Some of it.”
Daven took it down.
They had allowed for paid hours, materials, the use of the workshop and the people needed to receive the work. Daven had put his own unpaid time on a separate line so he could see what happened if he could not offer it again.
Eliza read the last figure.
“That doesn't buy the visit.”
“No.”
It did not buy half the visit. That was with every space filled and no awkward job taking the time of two straightforward ones.
Jory loosened the second plate. This side was sound. He placed the screws in the tray and checked the wood beneath them anyway.
“We did one before,” Eliza said. “It went well.”
“It did,” Daven answered. “There was a meal. People brought work. We didn't promise it would pay for something else.”
Eliza remembered the noise, the tables full, people staying to talk. From the doorway, it had looked like more money than the page now held.
“What if we had more jobs?”
“They'd take more time.”
He could see where the next question went. Less pay. Fewer people. Work done faster. He left it unasked.
Aven had kept her rough drawing beside the job sheet. She compared the two, then moved the pencil to a fresh part of the paper.
“Could I learn to do that?”
“What?” Daven asked.
“Work out what a job needs. Give somebody an answer without fetching you every time.”
“That takes practice.”
“I didn't ask if I could do it by lunch.”
Jory made a noise behind the table.
Daven ignored him.
“You'd need to know when to fetch me as well.”
“I already know that part.”
“Not just when I've lost something.”
She looked down at the little shape she had drawn. Eliza had seen her keeping lists, moving supplies, answering questions. He had mistaken how efficiently she did those things for evidence that they were all she wanted to do.
Daven put a finger on the sheet.
“We could start with this. After Nelda agrees, if she does. You follow the job through. Measure, write down what we find, compare the time afterward.”
“During my shift?”
“During your shift. I'll need to move the stock count.”
She considered that, then nodded.
“And I'd like to use the rule myself. Not just watch you use it.”
He passed her one from the bench.
“Start with the old mounting. Jory, show her where you measured from.”
“I can show her this part before my next job,” Jory said. “After that I've got the cabinet.”
“This part,” Daven agreed.
Eliza moved out of the light.
For the next few minutes Aven said very little. She measured, wrote a number, checked it and frowned. Jory turned the piece over. She measured from the other face and saw why they did not match.
“Oh.”
She crossed out the number. The next one she wrote more slowly.
The repair-afternoon page remained on the bench between Eliza and Daven.
“Do you still want to do it?” Eliza asked.
“As paid work people can bring in? Maybe. I need to ask the others about the actual hours. I won't advertise this as the way we get Edda's room ready.”
Daven folded the bottom of the page back, leaving the costs visible.
“I've asked for the assessment scope. It hasn't come yet.”
Eliza nodded.
He took out his notebook and changed the line about the repair afternoon. Then he put it away.
“I'll take Nelda the price.”
“Once I've finished it.”
“Yes.”
Jory returned to the cabinet. Daven checked the second hinge, calculated the repair and wrote out two copies of the quotation. It fitted the first day Nelda had said she could spare the table, provided she accepted before the stated time. He gave Eliza both copies and kept the figures with the job sheet.
“No repair until she says,” he said.
Eliza put it in the notebook, separate from the contribution list.
Aven was still measuring when he left. Her sleeve kept dragging across the paper. She rolled it back once, then again, irritated with it in a way he had not seen when she was merely finishing the lists.
Nelda read the quotation with one hand holding the corner against the wind.
“More than a bolt, then.”
“The wood under the hinge has split. They've included the other side being checked.”
She looked at the smaller table. The pears were piled too high. Each time somebody asked for one near the bottom, she had to move three others before she could reach it.
“I can pay that. I can't pay the same again when he finds another bit.”
“He said if anything changes, he asks first.”
Nelda read that part herself. Then she took the pencil Eliza offered and signed both copies, keeping one beneath the weight she used for her paper bags.
“Tell him yes. The day matters.”
He repeated the collection day and time. She checked them against her copy before handing the other back.
The spare corner of the stall was empty now. Without the doubtful table behind her, he could see an old stain on the wall and a little square of sunlight on the ground.
“Are you buying anything?” she asked.
He had been standing directly in front of the onions.
“Not onions.”
“I didn't say onions.”
He bought two apples. Nelda gave him a paper bag without writing any instructions on it.
On the way back, he stopped at Sera's door to tell her the table could be repaired. She had the yellow bowl on the table inside. It held a sewing reel, a folded cloth and no fruit at all.
“I brought these.”
She looked into the bag.
“Will they disturb your arrangement?” he asked.
“Terribly.”
She cleared a space in the bowl.
He had the signed quotation to take back to Daven. The next name on his contribution list would have to wait until after that. He put the bag down and chose the smaller apple for himself.
Sera moved the cloth to keep it clear of the cores and sat at the other end of the table.
Chapter 3 — Where the Light Falls
Edda wanted the chair in the kitchen.
“Just to try it,” she said. “Don't start taking doors off.”
Eliza had left Nelda's signed quotation with Daven before coming over. He still had his notebook, but Edda pointed at the little table beside the window.
“Put that there. I need your hands.”
The chair was wider than the doorway if they took it straight through. Turned sideways, it fitted until one arm caught the frame.
“Back a little,” Edda said.
He went back.
“Your little is quite a lot.”
“I can't see your end.”
“I'm telling you about it.”
They lowered the chair. Edda took off the cushion and put it on the window table, on top of his notebook. Without it, he could see a small piece of striped cloth sewn over a split in the seat.
They tried again, turning the chair the other way. This time the arm came through.
“It knows,” Edda said.
“Knows what?”
“That I'm thinking of replacing it.”
They carried it into the kitchen and set it in the corner she had cleared. The kitchen stool went beside the basin. A basket came off the floor and onto another chair. Eliza stood back while she fetched the cushion.
“That looks all right,” he said.
“Let me sit in it.”
She sat. From that corner she faced the pantry door. The light lay across the kitchen table, stopping short of her lap.
“I could move the table a bit,” he said.
“Leave it for now.”
He took the stool by the basin. His knees came higher than he expected.
Edda reached to her left, touched the wall and looked at her hand. Her book was still in the front room.
“Would you fetch it?”
He brought it, keeping a finger between the pages where she had left it open. A flat strip of green cloth lay across the lines. He put that in place before handing it to her.
She adjusted her glasses and began reading.
He looked at the baskets, then at the table. The chair would be better nearer the window, but it would leave too little space to pass when someone was sitting in it. He kept the thought to himself.
Edda turned a page.
“Would you like tea?” she asked.
“If you're having some.”
She put a finger on the book and began getting up.
“I can make it,” he said.
“No. I don't want any.”
She settled back. For a few moments her eyes remained on the page without moving down it.
Outside, someone dragged an empty crate along the lane. Edda looked toward the sound. From the front room she would have seen who it was.
“You can hear everything in here,” she said.
“You can in the front room.”
“Yes. I can also see something.”
He watched her find her line again.
“I'm not giving up the front room,” she said.
He had expected the words. He had thought he was ready for them.
“All right.”
She kept the book open in her lap.
“I wanted to try this before saying it.”
“It doesn't have to be this corner.”
Her eyes came up.
“Eliza.”
He stopped.
There were two boxes of books in the other room, the little table and the broad patch of floor where the chair had stood. He had seen them all before. Until now, he had thought of the floor as the easy part.
“I heard you,” he said.
“Then don't find another place for me yet.”
He pressed his hands between his knees.
She took off her glasses.
“Yesterday, when you were talking about showing people what we'd done, I started thinking what I'd have to put away.”
“We agreed we wouldn't bring people into the rooms.”
“I was there.”
He looked down.
“I was doing it before Aven said anything,” she went on. “Thinking which things looked untidy. Whether I should get the cloth off this chair. You hadn't even asked to bring anybody into mine.”
He had no answer ready for that.
“I don't want to spend the next month seeing the house through everybody else's eyes.”
The striped patch was under the cushion now. He had nearly offered to turn the cushion over when they put it back, to hide the thin place in the cushion's cover. He could not remember deciding that it ought to be hidden.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
Edda put her glasses on top of the book.
“I know you are.”
She sounded tired. He wanted her to say something else, something that would let him stand up and begin doing better. She rubbed the mark the glasses had left beside her nose.
“You can be very hard work,” she said.
He looked at her.
“I haven't asked you to give it up.”
“You haven't had to. You come in with all the things that could happen if I did.”
“You offered to have somebody look.”
“I did.”
The answer came quickly enough to leave him nowhere to put his anger.
“And now I'm saying I don't want them to.”
He could hear the clock behind him. It had a small catch in its ticking which he usually noticed only when the kitchen was empty.
“I thought I could do without the room,” Edda said. “I was pleased with myself for thinking it.”
She looked at the pantry door, then at the basket on the other chair.
“I could put all this somewhere. I know I could. I don't want to.”
He felt the beginning of a reply and kept his mouth shut. It would have been about someone who had nowhere to put anything.
“You used to come here for a cup of tea,” she said. “Now it's always something.”
That hurt more than the rest.
“I came to fix your drawer.”
“Yes, and then—”
“You asked me to fix it. And we had agreed to talk about the room. I didn't invent a reason to get through your door.”
Edda's mouth tightened.
He waited for her to tell him he was making it about himself.
Instead she looked toward the drawer. It sat closed beneath the counter.
“That's true,” she said.
He was still holding himself ready.
“Always was wrong. I shouldn't have said that.”
She did not pick up the book. Neither of them seemed to know what to do with their hands.
“I don't want every visit to be about the next thing,” she said after a while. “I didn't mean the other visits didn't count.”
He nodded, once.
“I don't know how to be pleased about losing this possibility,” he said.
“I haven't asked you to be.”
They sat with that. A fly touched the window, moved a short distance and tried the same pane again.
Eliza wanted to get up and let it out.
Edda opened her book, then closed it with the cloth in place.
“Would you help me put the chair back?”
He stood.
They moved the basket first, then the stool. He took the cushion through to the front room, then fetched her book and glasses. He left the book on the window table with the folded glasses on top. When he returned, Edda had her end of the chair tilted toward the doorway.
“Same way as before?” he asked.
“The way that worked.”
It caught once. They put it down rather than force it. Edda moved a little farther round her end, and this time they got it through without touching the frame.
She directed him to the patch beside the window. Before they lowered it, she nudged one foot a little to the left. The faded marks in the rug showed where it belonged.
Eliza put the cushion on the seat. He had the worn side facing down.
Edda turned it over.
“This way's softer.”
He moved the little table back within reach of her left hand. She set her glasses beside the book and sat down.
The light caught the open pages. Edda was looking out of the window.
“Will you tell Daven?” she asked.
“Yes. I'll tell him not to arrange a visit here.”
“And the money?”
“Nothing's been moved. I won't ask for money for this room.”
She nodded.
He picked up his notebook from the place where the cushion had been. The front room was still named inside it. He closed the cover before putting it in his pocket.
“Would you like me to go?”
“For a bit.”
He went into the kitchen for his coat. While he was putting it on, he noticed the fly on the window again. He opened the top a little and stood back. It took a long time to find the gap.
When he returned to the hall, Edda had begun reading.
“Mind the step,” she called.
“I will.”
He shut the door and watched where he put his feet.
At the workshop, Daven was fitting Nelda's hinge to the new mounting. Aven stood beside him with the sheet she had measured from.
Eliza waited until he put down the tool.
“Edda doesn't want the front room assessed,” he said. “She needs it for herself.”
Daven looked at him, then at the letter lying beside his book.
“I haven't sent that yet.”
He unfolded it. It contained the questions he had put together after his first request for the written scope. Edda's address was at the top.
“Good,” Eliza said.
“It took me a while.”
Daven read the first line again before drawing a stroke through the address.
“I'll tell them we're not taking it further.”
He folded the paper and put it beneath the book.
“Are you all right?” Aven asked.
“I'm disappointed.”
She waited.
“I thought I was coming back with a different answer.”
“Does she know that?”
“Yes.”
Aven looked at his face once more, then turned the sheet toward Daven.
“I've allowed for the washer this time.”
He checked the drawing against the hinge. Eliza stood beside the bench for a moment before remembering that the path behind him was narrow. He moved out of it.
On the other bench, Jory was working on the cabinet. A curl of wood dropped onto his sleeve. He shook it off and bent over the edge again.
The repairs would still need doing tomorrow. Nelda would still want the table at the time on her paper. Eliza could hear a cart passing in the lane and somebody outside laughing at something he had missed.
He went to the hook where he kept the broom.
“Are you using this bit of floor?” he asked Jory.
“Only to drop things on.”
“The useful things or the rest?”
“I'll shout.”
Eliza began at the far end, where the shavings had gathered beneath the empty bench. For a while he worked angrily, catching the broom against the legs. Then he slowed enough to reach the corners.
Chapter 4 — The Green Door
The following afternoon, Lina reached the green door with her case in one hand and the mint in the other.
The key was in her coat pocket.
She looked at the case, then at the plant. A woman passing with a shopping basket glanced at her and kept going. Lina put the case down.
It had seemed much lighter when she packed it.
Rilla had told her at the viewing, two evenings earlier, that the room would be ready today. The rent covered six weeks. They had agreed the last day as well as the first. There was a kitchen to share and a small room at the back, with a window looking into the yard.
Lina would have preferred a cooking place of her own. She had stood in the kitchen, asked when she could use it, and looked at the shelf Rilla cleared for her things. The answer had suited her well enough to take the room.
Now the key would not turn.
She took it out, turned it over and tried again.
Still nothing.
Rilla opened the door from inside.
“That's for your room.”
“There were two.”
“The longer one.”
Lina examined the other key.
“They could have made one red.”
“You can if you like.”
Rilla went back along the hall, leaving the door open while Lina put the keys away and lifted the case. By the time she had got it over the step, Rilla had disappeared into the kitchen.
Lina put the mint on the hall floor. She would bring it up after the case.
“Lina?”
Eliza had stopped on the pavement. He was carrying a folded cloth under one arm. A small corner of wood protruded from it.
“Do you want a hand?”
She looked up the stairs.
“Yes. Would you take the other end?”
He laid his bundle inside the door and bent to the case.
“This end?”
“Yes. I've got this one.”
They got it onto the first stair. The handle at her end pressed into the same place on her fingers.
“We have an answer about the room,” he said. “Did you still want to hear?”
“Yes.”
“We won't be making it available. I'm sorry.”
She rested her end on the stair above.
“All right.”
He waited.
She had liked the front window at Edda's. She had imagined putting the plant there while Eliza was still explaining that they did not know what could be done. At the viewing later that evening, she had kept comparing the back room with that window.
“I was hoping for it,” she said.
“So was I.”
“This one's six weeks.”
He looked up the stairs.
“Have you got everything you need?”
“I've got the room. I haven't brought everything yet.”
She changed her grip. The case shifted toward him.
“Could we get this to the top before we discuss the rest?”
“Yes.”
They carried it up without speaking. On the landing Lina put it down and rubbed her fingers against her coat.
Eliza straightened more slowly. His face had gone red.
“Mostly clothes,” she told him.
“Good heavy clothes.”
“Very reliable in a wind.”
He laughed, catching his breath.
She used the shorter key. The door opened into the room she had chosen. Rilla had taken away the boxes from the viewing and washed the floor. It smelled faintly of soap. The bed stood against one wall; a small table stood beside the window.
They set the case at the foot of the bed.
Eliza remained beside it.
“I thought you might want to know why,” he said.
“About Edda's?”
“Yes.”
“Would it change the answer?”
He looked at her.
“No.”
“Then perhaps another day.”
She had to find the mint, go back for the rest of her things and buy something for supper. The thought of putting down the case and beginning a different conversation made her shoulders ache.
He took his hand off the handle.
“Another day,” he said.
From below, Rilla called that whoever owned the plant ought to move it before she watered the floor by accident.
“Mine,” Lina called back.
Eliza brought it up. She took the tin and put it on the table. The dent in its base made it lean a little toward the window.
She had been holding that hand level for so long that, when she let go, she kept her palm beneath the rim for a moment.
Nothing fell.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You're welcome.”
He went downstairs for the bundle he had left by the door. She heard him speak to Rilla, then the front door close.
Lina sat on the bed without taking off her coat.
Across the yard, someone was beating a rug. A pale cloud rose, thinned and disappeared against the opposite wall.
The room was quieter than the street had made it seem. She could hear the rug being struck, but not what the person holding it was saying.
She took off one shoe, then the other.
For a few minutes she did nothing about the case.
Rilla was shelling peas when Lina came back with the last bag.
“Did you get what you wanted?”
“Eggs. Bread. I forgot salt.”
“There's salt.”
Rilla nodded toward a jar on the shelf beside the cooker.
Lina put her food on the cleared shelf. There was room left over. She moved the eggs farther from the edge.
“Is this yours?” Rilla asked.
She held up a handkerchief.
Lina checked her pocket.
“Yes.”
“On the stairs. I thought it was a rag until I unfolded it.”
“It doesn't improve much when you do.”
She took it and put it away. One corner still held the damp smell of mint.
Rilla pressed a pod open with her thumb. A pea sprang out, struck the edge of the bowl and vanished beneath the table.
They both looked down.
“That one lives here now,” Rilla said.
Lina set down her bag and crouched. She found it beside a table leg, along with a small button and a piece of string. She put the pea in the waste bowl and the button beside Rilla.
“I've been looking for that.”
“Which?”
“The button.”
Rilla examined it, then looked at her sleeve. The buttons were a different colour.
“Perhaps I haven't.”
Lina laughed. She had to sit on the nearest chair before she could explain that she was too tired to go down after another one.
Rilla pushed the empty chair nearer with her foot.
“Put your bag there. The floor's full.”
Lina put it on the chair. There was a scattering of peas in the bowl, a mound of empty pods and a pot warming on the cooker.
“What are you making?”
“Supper, if I finish these.”
“Could I put an egg on beside it?”
Rilla pointed to the small pan hanging beside the shelf.
“That one. The other one's for the peas.”
Lina filled it at the tap. As she put the egg into the water, she noticed that her fingers had stopped hurting.
She sat opposite Rilla and took a pod from the pile.
“Do you want me to?”
“If you're staying at the table.”
Lina opened it over the bowl. All the peas landed inside.
“Show-off,” Rilla said.
They worked until the egg was ready. Lina took it out and ran a little cold water over it. Rilla tasted the peas and added pepper.
The egg broke unevenly when Lina opened it. Part of the white stayed on the shell. She tried to scrape it free with the spoon, making less of an egg each time.
“Leave it,” Rilla said. “You'll be eating shell.”
“I've paid for that bit.”
Rilla put a spoonful of peas on her plate.
Lina looked at them, then at the shell. She set the shell aside.
She cut the bread into two pieces and pushed the larger toward Rilla's bowl. They ate while the water in the little pan cooled.
Rilla complained about a price at the market. Lina had paid the same price that afternoon and had been wondering whether she should have tried another stall. They agreed that the man had become expensive and neither knew where else to go.
By the time she washed her plate, the light had gone from the yard.
Upstairs, Lina unpacked the case.
She put the folded clothes in the cupboard, then moved them because she wanted the heavier things at the bottom. There was a hook on the inside of the door. Her coat hung there without touching the clothes beneath it.
She put the handkerchief on the table to dry.
Beside it lay her copy of the room agreement. Six weeks, ending on the date she and Rilla had named. She read that line again. She would have to look for somewhere beyond it.
From the case she took a small notebook. On a fresh page she wrote the last date, then counted back and marked when she would begin asking again. She had written that earlier date closer than she wanted to.
She sat with the pencil in her hand.
There would be things to carry again.
Below her, a door shut. Water ran through a pipe, stopped, then ran once more. Someone's shoes crossed the landing and went into another room.
Lina put the notebook beside the agreement.
She took the dented tin from the table and set it on a saucer she had brought up from the kitchen. A little soil had fallen beside the handkerchief. She gathered it with the side of her hand and tipped it back around the stems.
One leaf had folded beneath the rim. She eased it out.
The mint smelled stronger where it had been bruised.
There was still room on the table for the cup Rilla had told her she could take upstairs.
Lina went down to fetch it.
Chapter 5 — What the Job Took
At twenty minutes to eleven, Aven had finished everything on Nelda's sheet except the last line.
Checked under load.
Daven stood at the other end of the table, pulling one sleeve back from his wrist. The new mounting was fitted. The hinge had been opened and folded, adjusted, and opened again in short spells between other jobs since Nelda had accepted the price. Yesterday Aven had taken the same measurements twice without needing Jory to show her where to begin.
Now two crates waited on the floor. Daven had filled them to the working load he had agreed with Nelda. They were inconvenient to lift, which was probably a better likeness to a market morning than anything else they could have found.
“This end first,” he said.
They put the first crate down together. Aven kept her fingers under the lip until he told her it was settled.
“You can let go.”
She withdrew them.
They added the second crate and moved the load through the positions Daven had marked for the check. He watched the mounting while Aven watched the frame and the feet. From her side she could see the pale edge of the replacement timber beneath the hinge plate.
Nothing shifted.
Jory was working on the cabinet behind them. His plane stopped, started, then stopped again.
“Could you move that?” he said.
Aven looked down.
“What?”
“The stool. It's in the way.”
She stared at him for a moment before seeing the stool beside her foot.
She moved it with her heel. He went back to the cabinet.
Daven bent to look at the fixing from the other side.
“All right. Empty it.”
They lifted the crates off. He let Aven fold the table, watching where she put her hands. She had to stop halfway and change her grip, but the legs came in without catching the new piece.
“Again?” she asked.
“Once more.”
She opened it, set the legs, then folded it. This time she knew where to take the weight.
Daven checked the catches and stood back.
“That's ready.”
She looked at the clock before writing the time. Ten minutes. She put the mark against the last line and carried the sheet to the small desk.
Nelda was due at eleven. The table was ready with time left.
Aven set down the pencil, picked it up again and began adding the work entries.
They were scattered over the first afternoon, yesterday's work and this morning: fitting, measuring, refitting, checking. Beside some entries was Daven's name; beside others, hers. A separate line at the top recorded the preliminary examination, with no charge to Nelda.
She added the minutes and put the total beside the allowance.
It was worse than she had expected.
Daven came over while wiping his hands.
“What have you got?”
She turned the sheet toward him.
He read the first total and ran a finger down the entries. At the last one he stopped.
“We were both on that.”
“Ten minutes.”
“Each.”
She looked at the two names. She knew how to add. She had been thinking of the clock and had made one stretch of time do for both of them.
He waited while she corrected it.
One hundred and fifty minutes of repair work against ninety allowed in the price. The free examination sat above them, still costing the workshop time of its own.
“Some of that was me learning,” she said.
“Yes.”
She waited for him to take a pencil and move it somewhere else.
He checked the materials instead.
“Does it all stay against the job?”
“Put the teaching time on its own line as well. I need to see it.”
“But in the total?”
“Yes.”
She drew a small bracket beside the entries he had spent showing her. The figures did not improve when she labelled them.
Daven copied the cost of the replacement timber and the fittings into his book, added the paid time and looked at the price again.
“Oh.”
He did the subtraction a second time.
Aven wished he would tell her what it meant. Then she wished he would go away long enough for her to work it out herself.
“Is there any left?” she asked.
“A bit. Much less than I allowed.”
She looked toward the table. It stood neatly folded by the door.
“I could have done the measuring quicker.”
“So could I.”
“You were showing me.”
“I priced too much of it as if I wasn't.”
He put down the pencil. For a few moments he stood with his hands on the desk, looking at the numbers.
“That's annoying,” he said.
The door opened before she could answer.
Nelda came in pulling a handcart. One empty crate rattled against its side.
“Ready?”
Aven glanced at Daven. He was putting the book down.
“Yes,” she said. “It's here.”
Nelda let go of the cart handles and went to the table. She took hold of the folded frame as if she intended to leave with it under her arm.
“Shall I show you?” Aven asked.
“I know how it opens.”
“The new mounting.”
Nelda paused, then set it down.
“Go on.”
Aven opened it. She showed where the old mounting had split and where the sound new piece sat beneath the plate. The other hinge and frame had been checked, and they had finished the load check that morning.
She had been ready to explain why her first hole mark had been wrong. Nelda was looking at the legs.
“Does it fold the same way?”
“Yes.”
“Let me.”
Aven stepped back. Nelda closed the frame, turned it, opened it again and put a hand on either end. She pressed down, then leaned against the edge the way a customer might while choosing something from a crate.
“Better.”
She folded it once more.
Daven brought the quotation and bill to the bench. The amount was the one Nelda had agreed to.
She checked it against her copy, counted out the payment and waited while Aven wrote the receipt.
She put the receipt in front of Nelda, then dated the completed check on the work record beside the two names.
“Can you give me a hand with the cart?” Nelda asked.
They carried the folded table outside. Nelda put an old cloth between it and the cart rail, passed a strap around it and pulled the buckle tight. Aven held the frame steady while she fastened the end.
“Thank you,” Nelda said.
“You're welcome.”
Nelda took the handles, lifted and started down the lane. The crate rattled once. She stopped to push it farther in, then went on.
Aven stayed by the door until the cart had cleared the corner. The space where the table had stood was empty.
From inside, Jory asked if she had seen the small square.
“On the cabinet?”
“I've looked.”
She went back in. It was on the cabinet, beneath the sheet he had laid there.
She moved the paper and pointed.
“I hadn't looked there,” he said.
He took it and bent over his work. She returned to the desk.
Daven had entered Nelda's payment. Below it he had written the materials and paid work costs. The little amount left did not look like much beside all the things that had happened to the table.
He had begun a second calculation on the repair-afternoon page.
“What are you changing?” Aven asked.
“The number of jobs.”
“We haven't put it out yet.”
“No.”
He put the old calculation beside Nelda's sheet.
“I was giving us the same time twice in this one as well. Receiving a job while somebody shows you what it needs. Talking to the next customer while we check the first repair.”
He crossed out two of the proposed spaces.
“If we try an afternoon, we start smaller.”
The new total was lower. Aven watched him write it without searching the rest of the page for somewhere to get the old figure back.
“Does that mean no more time on the bench for me?” she asked.
He looked at her, then at the stock-count sheet waiting beneath her elbow.
“No. It means I have to leave time for it.”
He pulled the work book closer and found the next day they were both in. There were two jobs already entered. He drew a line through the empty space between them and wrote an hour against Aven's name.
“For what?”
“Following another one through. We'll pick it when I've seen what comes in.”
She studied the space. It was an hour in which he could have booked something else.
“I want to work out a price before I see yours,” she said.
“You can try.”
He stopped, his pencil still on the page.
“On the sheet. Bring it to me before you tell anybody a price.”
“I wasn't going to sell your workshop.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know.”
Neither of them laughed. She wished she had just said yes.
Daven wrote the hour more clearly, then shut the book.
“Stock count first today.”
“I know.”
This time she managed to make it sound different.
She put Nelda's finished sheet with the quotation and the paid bill. The old allowance remained beside the actual time.
She picked up the stock-count board. Jory had left the aisle clear for her, moving his timber before she needed to ask. He was already measuring the cabinet's next edge.
Aven went to the shelves and counted the first box. Then she counted it again, because she had been thinking about tomorrow's hour.
Chapter 6 — A Week to Decide
A week after Nelda collected her table, she stopped Eliza at the market to ask whether he knew anybody looking for a room.
He had an orange in each hand. He put one down before answering.
“Possibly. Where?”
“Behind Corven's printing shop.”
She pointed with the corner of the cloth she had been folding.
“The lane past the clock shop. He put a notice up this morning. Says he wants to let it if the work makes sense.”
“What work?”
“You'll have to ask him. I sell vegetables.”
She took the orange he had put down, examined a soft place near the stalk and exchanged it for another.
“That one's better.”
He paid for both.
At the end of the lane, Sera was waiting beneath the tram shelter with a folded programme in her hand. She had bought a ticket for the afternoon music at the hall two days from now. He had said he would go and had not yet bought his.
“They still have seats,” she said.
He took the programme. Someone had printed the names of four players in type too small for the space available. He held it farther away.
“Do you know any of these?”
“One. The violinist. I want to hear what she's playing.”
He gave it back.
“I'll get the ticket today.”
She put the programme in her bag. He told her about the notice.
“I'm going to look,” he said. “Would you like to?”
She checked the time.
“I've got until half past twelve.”
They went down the lane together. A delivery cart stood outside the clock shop, and a man on a ladder was trying to clean the upper window without moving it. Below him, the driver maintained that the cart was not in anybody's way.
They turned sideways and passed between the argument and the wall.
Corven's shop had a narrow front, a window full of paper samples and a door that needed a firm push. The bell rang once when Eliza opened it and twice when Sera followed.
“In a minute,” a man called.
They waited beside a rack of envelopes. Through an open doorway, Eliza could see a press, several stacks of paper and a man picking a sheet up by its cleanest corner.
The man held it toward the window, sighed and put it on another pile.
“What can I do for you?”
“The room,” Eliza said.
“You want to live in it?”
“I'm asking about it for somebody who might. I'm Eliza.”
“Corven.”
They shook hands. Corven noticed the ink on his own fingers afterward and looked at Eliza's palm.
“Sorry.”
“It'll wash.”
“Some of it.”
Corven fetched a cloth. Sera introduced herself while Eliza rubbed at the blue mark.
“It's through here,” Corven said.
He took them past the press and out into a small yard. There were paper crates under a covered part of the wall, a water butt and a plum tree that had grown sideways to avoid the building. Beyond it stood a single-storey addition with its own door onto the lane. Corven unlocked that door first, then led them inside from the yard.
The main room was larger than Eliza had expected. A window faced the tree. A cooking bench and sink occupied one corner, with a small washroom beyond a second door. The rest held shelves and three empty packing cases.
The press began running in the shop behind them. Its low, regular knock came through the wall.
“Does that go all day?” Sera asked.
“When there's work. Some mornings. Sometimes a Saturday.”
She stood still and listened.
“It would bother some people,” Corven said.
“Yes.”
“I can't promise it won't be used. It pays for most of this.”
He gestured toward the building.
Eliza opened the lane door and looked back through the room. The approach was level except for a low threshold. The washroom could be reached without going into the shop. He could see a place for a bed against the long wall without blocking either door.
“May I measure?” he asked.
Corven nodded.
He checked the doorway, the distance to the cooking bench and the space left by the washroom door. He wrote the figures down, then put the tape away.
“Those connections need checking,” he said, pointing to the old cooking point. “And whoever looks at it needs to consider the shop next door, not just this room.”
“I've asked for a visit. Nobody's assessed it for living in yet.”
Eliza went back to the window. A small boy in the next yard was trying to persuade a dog to fetch a ball. The dog watched the ball land, looked at the boy and lay down.
Sera smiled.
“What?” Eliza asked.
“He's been doing that since we came in.”
The boy fetched the ball himself.
Eliza looked around again. From the lane he had imagined a narrow leftover space. Now he could picture somebody opening the window while a pan warmed, hearing the press start, putting a coat away before sitting down.
“What would you want for it?”
Corven gave them the proposed rent. He had it written on the back of a sheet spoiled by a crooked line of print.
“I'd offer a year to begin with, after the work and the final checks. I don't want somebody changing every month. I also don't want to be chasing the payment through three other people.”
“Who pays for the work?”
“I do. If it's within the amount I've put aside. It's my building.”
Corven rubbed one stained finger with the cloth.
“There's a merchant who'll take it for paper storage. Less rent, less work. He wants an answer this time next week. If I turn him away, I need to know I'm going ahead with a letting.”
Eliza read the rent again.
“And when would someone have to move in?”
“I'd aim for three weeks from today. Depends on what the assessment says and when the trades can do it. Nobody pays rent for an unfinished room. But I can't do the work and then hold it empty for another month.”
“I know someone who may want to see it. She's found somewhere for six weeks. She'd need to decide for herself whether this suits her.”
“Give her my name.”
Corven handed him another sheet with the rent, proposed dates and shop telephone number. Eliza asked which hours were good to call, then checked the two doors once more.
Sera was beside the window.
“What do you think?” he asked her.
“I like the tree.”
He looked out. The boy had begun rolling the ball along the ground. The dog got up.
She went over to Corven and asked where the rubbish went, whether a person could come through the lane door when the shop was shut, and if he intended to keep anything stored here.
“No storage after the letting starts. I need to get the shelves out.”
He tried one against the wall. It was screwed firmly in place.
“That'll wait,” he said.
They returned through the yard. Sera paused beneath the plum tree and looked up into its branches.
“Does it produce many plums?”
“Enough to get tired of them.”
“I doubt I'd get tired of them.”
Corven went ahead to answer the shop bell. Eliza remained in the yard a moment, looking at the separate lane entrance. He could see the route a person would take home. It did not pass his desk or Edda's kitchen.
Inside, Corven finished with a customer buying paper and picked up the telephone. The person he had asked about an assessment had returned a message that morning. There was a place available two afternoons from now.
“Two o'clock,” Corven repeated. He named the address, asked what the visit would include and confirmed the fee.
Eliza heard Sera move beside him. The music began at three.
Corven put down the receiver.
“Booked. I'll pay for that whether it goes further or not.”
“Will you give the person considering the room the findings?” Eliza asked.
“Yes. She can come to the visit if she wants. I'd rather hear her questions before I pay somebody to alter things.”
Eliza checked that he had written the time correctly. For a moment he considered asking Sera whether they could arrive late at the hall.
Then he remembered her saying she wanted to hear the player. Not the end of the player. He put the sheet away.
“I'll pass this on this afternoon,” he told Corven. “If she wants to come, she'll call you.”
“I'll be here.”
Outside, Sera turned toward the tram stop.
“I have to go.”
He looked at the clock shop. They were two minutes before half past twelve.
“I'll see you at the hall.”
“With a ticket?”
“With a ticket.”
He went to buy it before going anywhere else. The woman at the hall window asked which seat he wanted. There were still several beside Sera's.
He chose one and paid.
On the way back he stopped outside the printing shop. The notice was still in the window. Corven was at the press, lifting a newly printed sheet into the light.
Eliza did not go in again. He took the lane that led toward Rilla's, carrying an address, a proposed rent and a small square ticket that he kept in a different pocket.
Chapter 7 — The Blue Bicycle
The bicycle had a broad saddle, a small carrier over the back wheel and a blue frame that looked darker in the shade.
Lina had passed it four times that week.
On the fifth, coming back from her morning shift at the laundry, she stopped and asked the price again.
“Same as yesterday,” the man said.
“I know. I was hoping you'd forgotten.”
He wiped a patch of dust from the saddle.
“Want to try it?”
She had expected to be asked for money first. She put her bag behind his counter and took the bicycle into the lane.
It was heavier than it looked. She swung one leg over, pushed away and discovered that the saddle was too high. He lowered it while she stood beside him pretending that had been the only difficulty.
The second time, she got both feet to the pedals.
For the length of the lane she had to think about steering. Then the road opened beside the little square, and she began thinking about how much farther she could go.
She rode around it twice. On the second circuit she stopped looking at the front wheel.
The man watched her come back.
“Well?”
“I'd like it.”
“I thought you might.”
She did not ask him to put it aside. She gave it back, took her bag and walked toward Corven's shop with the muscles above her knees still aware of the ride.
Eliza had left the room details with her the previous afternoon. She had read the proposed rent before asking anything else. With her ordinary laundry shifts, it was possible. She had checked without counting work she might be offered later.
It was more than she had hoped to pay. It also included a cooking place that belonged to the room and a term measured in a year.
The printing shop bell rang above her head.
Corven emerged carrying a stack of cards. He set them down before shaking hands.
“Lina?”
“Yes.”
“Come through. I've cleared the cases so you can see it properly.”
She followed him past the press. One of the stacks had a concert programme on top. She recognised the design from the hall window.
“Did you print those?”
“Yes. I had to do them twice.”
He led her through the yard and opened the room.
Without the packing cases, it looked larger than the dimensions on Eliza's sheet. She stood by the cooking bench, then opened the washroom door. Corven showed her how the lane key worked from both sides.
“You wouldn't have to come through the shop.”
She went outside and shut the door. For a moment she stood in the lane, considering which way she would walk to work. Farther than from Rilla's, but the laundry could be reached without going through the market crowds.
She unlocked the door and went in again.
The window looked into the yard. There was a plum tree, a patch of rough ground beneath it and a washing line with nothing on it.
“Could I use that?”
“Yes. I dry cleaning cloths there sometimes.”
“And the tree?”
Corven looked out.
“What about it?”
“If there are plums.”
“Take some. Leave a few for me.”
She smiled and moved back to the bench. There would be room to cut bread while a pan stood on the cooker. At Rilla's she sometimes had to move the peas or the bowl of pods first. She had begun liking the way supper stretched into conversation there. She still wanted this bench.
“How long have I got to decide?”
“Six days now. I need the assessment first. That's tomorrow at two.”
“I'll be here.”
They went over the proposed rent, ordinary bills and the work Corven expected to pay for. Lina asked what would happen if the room was not ready on the day they named.
“The rent starts when it's ready and handed over. If I can't get it ready within the limit we agree, you can withdraw and have the advance back. We'll put that in the terms before anyone pays.”
“I want to read those.”
“So do I. I've only got the proposed figures so far.”
He gave her copies. She asked him to show her the lane entrance once more, then left without saying she would take it.
Rilla was cleaning the cooker when Lina got back. She had the small pan on the table and a stubborn dark mark beneath the place where it usually stood.
“Any good?”
Lina put down her bag.
“I liked it.”
“I kept thinking about the cooking place,” Lina said. “Having the whole bench.”
Rilla went back to the mark.
Lina had meant to wait until the kettle was on. She took the room details from her bag instead.
“He wants the rent to start when the work's finished. About three weeks from yesterday, if it goes to plan.”
“You'll still have some time here.”
“Nearly two weeks.”
The cloth stopped moving.
“I can't promise to give that back,” Rilla said. “I worked out what was coming in before we agreed the six weeks. If somebody wanted those days and we both agreed to end yours early, I could return what they covered. I can't say there will be somebody.”
Lina sat down.
“I wanted to ask before I counted on it.”
Rilla rinsed the cloth. For a while the only sound was water running into the basin.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
“You didn't make the dates.”
“I still don't like saying it.”
The money for the bicycle would cover the overlap. Lina would have to use the rest toward the first payment.
“You could stay the whole six weeks,” Rilla said.
“Then I might lose this one.”
“Yes.”
Lina had almost asked Rilla what she ought to do. Rilla had started scrubbing again.
“There's an assessment tomorrow,” Lina said. “I'll know more after that.”
Rilla nodded.
“What was the window like?”
“It looks into a yard.”
“Anything growing?”
“A plum tree.”
“Oh.”
For the first time since Lina had mentioned the dates, Rilla smiled.
“You'll be bringing some back here.”
“If it happens.”
“If it happens.”
The woman who came to assess the room began at the lane entrance, then asked Corven to show her through to the shop.
She checked the room, the washroom and the routes to the lane and yard. She examined the old cooking connection without turning it on and spent time in the shop looking at the wall between the two spaces. She asked Corven what work happened there and when.
Lina waited beside the window until there was a question she could answer.
“Early shifts?” the woman asked.
“At the laundry. Sometimes I'm back just after lunch.”
“Then you'll want to hear what the press sounds like while you're here.”
Corven ran it for a few minutes. Lina listened from the place where the bed could stand, then from the cooking bench. There was a regular knock and a lower sound beneath it. She would hear it if she tried to sleep in the afternoon.
“I could live with that,” she said.
The woman wrote something down.
She gave Corven a defined list: the cooking ventilation needed proper work; the old electrical connection was to be replaced and checked; the separation from the workshop required the specified work; and a leaking fitting in the washroom needed repairing. The final checks would follow the completed work. She would send the findings and scope in writing.
“Subject to that work and the final checks, it can be used for living in,” she said. “Get the trades to price the actual list.”
He let out a breath.
Lina asked about access while the shop was closed and who she would contact if a repair was needed. Corven gave his number and the separate contact he used when he was away. She asked for both to be in the proposed agreement.
Then she asked the woman to explain one item again. The woman did, drawing a small outline on the page. Lina could see what would change and what would stay where it was.
Lina went into the yard while Corven and the woman settled the visit details and payment. A gust moved the tree above the empty washing line. Through the window she could hear him asking when the written findings would come.
On the way back she went past the bicycle shop. The blue one was still outside.
The man lifted a hand.
“Another go?”
She nearly said she shouldn't. Instead she put her bag behind the counter and took it into the lane.
She rode around the square once, slowly enough to hear the carrier rattle over the uneven stones.
Chapter 8 — What She Chose
While Lina was at the assessment, Eliza sat beside Sera in the hall and watched the cello player settle his instrument.
The man plucked a string, listened and adjusted something near the top. A woman in the row ahead finished unwrapping a sweet with a series of small, determined crackles.
Eliza took off his coat and folded it across his knees.
The first piece began before he expected it. For several bars he kept waiting for the part that would tell him what sort of thing he was listening to. Then a lower line came in beneath the others, and he forgot to wait.
Sera was watching the violin player she knew. When the players paused, she leaned forward a little.
Eliza began to clap. He stopped after two claps, which sounded much louder than they had felt in his hands.
The music began again.
Sera's shoulders moved once. He looked at her. She was still facing the players, but he could see that she was smiling.
At the interval they went outside. Sera bought a small paper cup of something the seller described as lemonade. Eliza tasted his and looked toward the stall.
“Did they say how close the lemon had been?”
“Close enough to raise the price.”
She took another mouthful anyway.
He asked how she knew the violin player.
“She tried to steal my umbrella.”
“Did you get it back?”
“We were waiting for a tram. She picked it up thinking it was hers, then got her glove caught trying to open it. By the time I'd got it open, hers had blown under the bench. We nearly missed the tram fetching it out.”
Eliza laughed.
“She had a violin case through all of this,” Sera added. “That was how I found out what she did.”
“I hope the violin stayed dry.”
“It went under my umbrella before she put herself there.”
From inside came a short run of notes, then the sound of somebody moving a chair.
“I'd like to come again,” he said.
“There's another next month.”
“Then let's.”
“I'd like that.”
They went in before the bell finished ringing. He put his coat beneath the chair this time and sat with his hands free.
Five days later, Eliza returned to Corven's shop because Lina had asked him to come while she read the final terms.
He arrived early. One corner of the room notice had come loose and folded over the word room.
Corven was on the telephone.
“I'm not asking you to start before I've agreed it. Can you still keep those dates?”
He listened, wrote something and thanked the person at the other end.
“The electrician,” he told Eliza. “I have to confirm today.”
The written findings lay with the trades' prices. Lina already had copies. They were still aiming to have the room ready in about two weeks. Daven's separate price covered the cupboard and shelves, including Aven's paid learning time beside Jory; the specialist work had its own bookings.
Corven looked at the total.
“The storage would have been cheaper.”
“And brought in less rent.”
“Eventually.” Corven put the prices beside his own account. “This bit comes first.”
Lina arrived with her bag and the coat Eliza remembered from the moving day. She sat at the clear end of the counter and took out her notes.
“I've read it. Show me where you've put the repair numbers.”
Corven turned to the page. Both contacts were there, followed by the lane and yard arrangements. She checked the agreed dates and the provision for returning her advance if the readiness limit could not be met and she withdrew. The year and rent would start at ready handover; the advance would count toward the first payment.
She turned one page back.
“You won't be bringing paper through the room?”
“No storage once you take it. I'll have cleared it.”
Lina left her finger beside that line.
“I can manage the rent on my ordinary hours. It's the nearly two weeks I'm still paying for where I am.”
“I can't hold this one empty until—”
“I haven't asked you to.”
Corven stopped. He looked down at the copy in front of him.
Lina took an envelope from her bag. She unfolded it, counted the advance and left the last note in her hand while she counted the money on the counter again.
Eliza had not known until then whether she would pay it. He could see the corner of the note pressed against her thumb.
She laid it with the others.
“I want the room. On these terms.”
Corven offered his pen. They signed both copies. He wrote the receipt while she checked the dates once more, then she checked the receipt too.
Eliza felt a quick lift in his chest. He wanted to go into the yard and look at the room again.
Lina folded the empty envelope.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“I'm glad you asked.”
Corven took down the notice and began the first confirmation call. Lina put away her papers and stood.
Outside, Eliza offered her a lift. She said she wanted to walk.
“I'll come as far as the square.”
They went through the lane past the clock shop. The upper window had a clean middle and a grey border where the man on the ladder had been unable to reach.
At the bicycle shop, Lina slowed.
“I'll only be a minute.”
Eliza waited near the corner while she spoke to the man. The blue bicycle stood outside with its front wheel turned toward the road. She put a hand on the saddle, then took it away.
The man said something. Lina shook her head.
When she came back, she looked toward the far side of the square.
“What was it?” Eliza asked.
“I was saving for that.”
He looked at the bicycle.
“The overlap?”
“Yes. And the first payment.”
They began walking again.
He nearly said she could save again. It was true and would have been no use just then.
“I liked the blue,” she said.
“So did I.”
She walked several steps before speaking.
“I still want the room.”
He nodded.
At the next corner she turned toward Rilla's. Eliza went back to the car. He sat for a little while before starting it, hearing the music from five days earlier badly enough in his head that he could no longer remember which instrument had carried the part he liked.
The work began the following morning.
Eliza stopped at the shop on his way to the market. A tradesman's bag stood beside the washroom door. Corven was shifting paper crates farther under the covered part of the yard.
Jory arrived with Daven's work order. Aven followed, carrying the measurements and the price she had worked out before seeing Daven's. He had corrected two items, then asked her to explain a third. Her figure had held on that one.
They began the paid cupboard work while the electrician brought his case in from the lane. Corven showed them where the removed material could go, then left to answer the shop bell.
Jory looked at the cupboard and the doorway.
“Take that end first,” he told Aven.
She put down her clipboard. They moved the cupboard clear together, exposing a pale rectangle on the plaster.
The room still had work to be done and checks to pass. Lina's key was not on her ring yet.
Eliza stepped into the lane and pulled the door closed behind him. The press started in the shop. Through the open window above its steady knock, he could hear them working.
Chapter 9 — The Long Wall
Six days after work began at Corven's, Aven knew which part of the annex floor would make a pencil roll toward the yard door.
She caught it with her shoe.
Jory moved the box of fittings onto the bench and passed her the small square. The cupboard lay on its back between them, its doors removed. Through the yard doorway she could see the lower branches of the plum tree moving in a wind that had not yet reached the ground.
The old cupboard was going back beside the cooking bench. Its frame was sound, but the wall behind it leaned away near the floor. They had agreed how to support and fix it without making the doors follow the wall. Aven had drawn the arrangement on a sheet which now had a boot mark across one corner.
She had drawn it three times. The first drawing had made sense until Jory asked where the wall was. In the second, she had put in so many measurements that neither of them could find the one they needed. This one could be read while they were working.
“Ready?” she asked.
Jory checked that the path was clear.
They lifted the frame, turned it between the bench and the doorway, and lowered it onto the supports they had prepared. Aven held it while he checked. Then they changed places so she could see what he was looking at.
It stood properly. There was still a tapering gap down one side where the wall refused to be straight.
“The strip will cover that,” she said.
For a while they worked without needing to move anything twice. He held; she marked. She checked; he cut. The press began in the shop, and she had to tap his arm to ask him to wait while she fetched the shorter clamp.
When the first door went back on, it opened without touching the bench.
Aven opened it again.
“It did that the first time,” Jory said.
“I'm enjoying it.”
He left her to fit the other one.
Corven came through carrying a paper parcel and stopped with one foot over the threshold.
“Can I get past?”
“Not yet,” they said together.
He stepped back into the yard. Aven tightened the last fixing, checked the door and moved the tools from his route.
“Now.”
Corven put the parcel on the cooking bench. It contained the new tap fitting for the washroom, which he left unopened for the person coming to fit it.
He tried the cupboard door.
“That's better than it ever was.”
“The wall hasn't improved,” Aven said.
“I hadn't budgeted for a better wall.”
He went back to the shop.
Lina came at midday carrying a bag and a folded piece of string.
“Is this a bad time?”
Jory looked at the lunch he had just taken out.
“Depends what you need.”
“I brought the height of something.”
She unfolded the string. A knot marked one end of the length she held between her hands.
The cupboard shelves had not yet been fitted. Aven had marked their intended positions on the inside. Lina put the string against the lowest space and looked at the mark.
“Would this one go a little higher?”
“How much?”
“To there.”
“What's it for?”
“A tall pot. I use it for washing smaller things. I'd rather not keep it beside the bed.”
Aven looked at the two marks she had already made. The spaces above would become uneven. In her drawing they were equal, and the drawing had taken most of the evening before yesterday.
Lina held the string without speaking.
Aven measured the remaining space. There was enough for the other shelf, a little lower than she had planned. No part needed cutting again.
She marked the new position.
“Like that?”
Lina checked her string.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Will the pot go through the door?” Jory asked from the yard.
Lina turned the string across the opening.
“I measured across the widest part as well.”
She produced another length from her pocket.
“I've been very busy with string.”
Aven laughed. She checked the width while Lina held it. There was room.
Lina looked around the unfinished space. The cooking connection was still being worked on; the shelf beside the window had been taken down for painting. She stayed away from both.
“The bed can come next week if everything's ready,” she said. “I've paid the shop. They won't deliver it into a room people are still working in.”
“Sensible,” Jory said.
“I thought it was inconvenient until he asked where he'd put it.”
She rolled the string around her fingers. There was a little plain table at the same shop. She was going to look at it after her next pay.
Aven could remember being shown the measurements of her own room. She had tried to imagine living between the numbers and had mostly imagined putting her bag down. Lina was looking at the space beneath the window as if she could already see something there.
“What are you having for curtains?” Aven asked.
“I haven't got that far.”
“There's time.”
“There's a window.”
They both looked at it. The boy in the next yard was lying on his stomach beside the dog. Neither appeared to be asking the other to do anything.
Lina put away the string and left them to their lunch.
Aven had brought the notice folded inside her bread paper.
She took it out before putting the bread on her knee. Jory sat at the far end of the yard bench, trying to remove something from an apple with the tip of his knife.
“What have you got?”
“Four evenings. Drawing for practical work.”
He looked over.
“Where?”
She showed him the address. It was a room above the shop where she had bought her pencil. The woman at the counter had said people could come after their ordinary work. There was a fee for the four evenings, and they would need paper, a ruler and something to draw with.
“Tonight's the first.”
“Are you going?”
“I think so.”
He cut the bad piece from the apple.
“What sort of things do they draw?”
“Things that ought to fit together.”
“Useful.”
She turned the notice over. There was nothing on the back.
“I want to be able to show what I mean before it's already wood.”
Jory offered her the untouched side of the apple. She shook her head. She had brought enough food, though she had forgotten anything to drink.
After lunch they fitted the shelves at the new heights. The lower one looked wrong to Aven until she shut the doors. Then nobody could see the spacing at all.
There was still trim to finish. They put away the parts that needed to remain flat, left the room clear for the next worker and returned to Daven's with the tools before their paid day ended.
At the workshop Aven put her drawing beside the work record. Daven asked what remained and when they could return. She told him. He checked the next day's work and agreed the time.
She had expected to mention the class while they were speaking. He was looking for a customer's note beneath three other notes, and she found herself waiting for him to look pleased about something he did not yet know.
“I'm going to a drawing class tonight,” she said.
He looked up.
“Good. Tell me what it's like.”
“I will.”
He found the note. She put on her coat.
There were six other people in the room above the shop, and every one of them appeared to know where to sit.
Aven chose the place nearest the door. She paid for the four evenings, counted her change and put it into the small pocket in her bag. The fee came from her own wages. She had brought the ruler she used at home, but the instructor looked at it and lent her a longer one.
“You'll want that for this.”
On the front table stood a wooden box with a lid which would not close.
The instructor asked them to draw it from two sides before suggesting what had gone wrong.
Aven looked at the hinges. The man beside her looked at the lid. He began drawing so quickly that she turned her paper over, though she had not marked it yet.
The instructor came past.
“Start with what you can see.”
Aven drew the long side. The line ran slightly uphill. She rubbed it out and began again.
Beside her, the man stopped drawing. He leaned forward, looked at the box and made a small, irritated noise.
She was glad enough to hear it that she had to keep her face down.
By the time they were asked to exchange pages, she had a drawing someone else could recognise. It was not as tidy as the cupboard plan. There were three places where she had rubbed through the surface of the paper.
The man beside her turned it round.
“Which side is this?”
She showed him. He moved his ruler across the page, then handed her his own.
She could not find the hinge.
“I haven't put it in,” he said.
“I thought I couldn't see it.”
“Neither could I, apparently.”
They laughed quietly. The instructor asked them to keep the first pages for next week.
Aven laid hers flat on top of her bag instead of folding it. When the woman came back to the front table, Aven asked if she would turn the box so they could see the other hinge.
The woman did. Aven pulled the longer ruler closer and began another view.
Chapter 10 — Two Journeys
On the morning Lina was to move, Rilla asked her to hold the other end of a sheet.
“Not that corner. You've got the middle.”
Lina found the corner. They shook it out between them in the kitchen, where there was scarcely enough room for either to move backward.
“Is this the one from my bed?” Lina asked.
“Yes.”
They brought the corners together. Rilla took the folded sheet and turned toward the basket without asking how Lina felt about leaving.
The room upstairs was almost empty of Lina's things. Her case stood open beneath the window, and the last bag waited beside it. She had washed the cup and saucer from Rilla's kitchen and put them back on the shelf. The mint stood on an old plate of her own, waiting to be carried.
“Have you eaten?” Rilla asked.
“Some bread.”
“How much?”
Lina took another piece while Rilla folded the next sheet alone. She had been awake before the house made its first sound, going over what had to be collected and what had already been paid.
The bed was hers. She had bought it secondhand with money set aside from her wages during the two weeks since signing, after keeping back food and the remaining rent payment. The shop had agreed to deliver it that afternoon. Yesterday she had bought the little table as well, with two chairs whose seats were different colours. The curtains would have to wait. She had clean bedding and a cloth she could hang across the window at night.
There was not enough left for a bicycle. There had not been enough for days.
Rilla put the sheets away.
“Do you need me now or later?”
“Later, if you still can. Just for the bags. The bed's being brought.”
“I can until four.”
“That should be enough.”
Rilla looked at her.
“I said that when I started the washing.”
Lina took the bread with her.
Corven was outside the annex when she arrived, trying the lane door with a key.
“Come through the yard,” he said. “I've just washed this bit.”
The room smelled of paint, though the windows had been open since early morning. The cupboard doors were back on. She opened the lower one and found the space she had measured with string.
The final visit, after the specified work and trades' checks, had confirmed the room ready for the agreed residential use. Corven had given her the written findings yesterday; she had read them before arranging the delivery.
She turned the water on and off, tried the window and checked the lane lock herself. The workmen's tools were gone. Nothing had been left in the room for storage.
He put the payment record beside her agreement. The advance was already credited. She paid the remaining amount due for the first period, and he wrote the receipt. They entered today's handover date as the beginning of the year and the rent.
“You can reach me in the shop most days,” he said.
“I've got both numbers.”
He looked at the room. Without a tool case or packing box in it, he seemed less sure where to stand.
“I'll get the cloth from outside.”
Lina put the receipt away and went through the lane door. She locked it, then opened it again.
Corven was hanging the cloth over the water butt.
“It works,” she said.
“I hoped so.”
She smiled, put her key into her pocket and went back for her things.
Rilla had put the kettle on. Lina could hear it before she reached the kitchen.
“They've finished?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
There were two cups on the table.
“Have we got time?” Lina asked.
“Until four.”
They sat. Rilla had to move the bread basket so Lina could put down the bag she had been carrying for no reason.
“You haven't brought anything back,” Rilla said.
“I've got the key.”
“I meant your bag.”
Lina looked inside it. Apart from the papers and her purse, it was empty.
“I thought I might need it.”
For nearly a month they had been able to talk by going into the same kitchen. Lina had learned when Rilla wanted an answer and when she was addressing a pan. At first she had answered everything. Now she waited while Rilla considered whether the kettle had become slower.
“You could still sleep here tonight,” Rilla said.
“I know.”
The thirteen days remaining on the agreement had not found another occupant. There was no refund to count. Lina had known that when she paid for the new room. She could use the old one until the agreed end if she needed to, and they had arranged that she would bring back both keys then.
“I want to try the new bed,” she said.
“You tried it in the shop.”
“Not asleep.”
“They'd have minded.”
Lina laughed into her tea and had to put it down.
Afterward she went upstairs for the case. It did not want to close. She knelt beside it, moved the heavier clothes and found that she had put the handkerchief across the fastening.
Rilla came to the doorway.
“I've found your spoon.”
“Mine?”
“You brought it.”
Lina had. She had forgotten she had ever brought it anywhere.
She took it and put it in the bag. Then they carried the case downstairs, Rilla taking the end nearest the landing. This time Lina knew where to turn before the stair narrowed.
The mint went in the last bag with the plate beneath it. She carried that herself.
They made two journeys. On the first they took the case and the smaller things, Lina letting herself into the annex while Rilla examined the yard. On the second they brought the final bags and found the furniture cart outside the lane door.
“Are you the bed?” the driver asked.
“I'm hoping to be,” Lina said.
He looked at her long enough for Rilla to begin laughing.
“She bought it,” Rilla explained.
The driver and his helper carried it in, followed by the table and the two chairs. Lina showed them where she wanted the bed. They assembled it, set down the wrapped mattress and asked her to check before they left.
She sat on the edge. The frame stayed quiet. Rilla sat at the other end and gave it a small, deliberate bounce.
“What?” she asked when Lina looked at her.
The driver smiled. Lina thanked him, and he took away the packing cloths.
Rilla helped her make the bed. They put the table beneath the window, then moved it out a little because Lina wanted to sit on both sides. The mint could go at one end without taking the place where a plate would stand.
“You've got more walking space there,” Rilla said, pointing to the other wall.
“I want to see out.”
“All right.”
They left it where it was.
At a quarter to four Rilla put on her coat.
“You know the way back,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I meant—”
“I know.”
Neither made the other finish. Rilla checked that she had her own key and went out through the lane door.
Lina watched from the window until she remembered that it faced the yard.
For the first hour, she moved things she had only just put down.
The table stayed where it was. The case went beneath the bed. She found that she could open the cupboard without moving a chair, provided she did not leave her bag where she had first dropped it.
The press started while she was washing the pot that fitted on the lower shelf.
She had heard it before. She had not heard it while there was nobody in the room to speak over it.
It ran for a while, stopped and began again. She dried the pot and put it away. The noise did not prevent her doing anything. She was irritated by it anyway.
For supper she heated potatoes and cut bread on the bench she had wanted. Nobody needed to move the bowl of pods. Nobody asked whether she had eaten enough.
She ate at the table, facing the yard. When she reached for the salt, she found she had left it beside the cooker and had to get up.
After supper she hung the cloth across the window. One corner sagged until she found another pin. The light changed at once; the room became smaller and more private.
She lay on the bed in her clothes to see whether she could hear the press from there. It had stopped.
Outside, a ball struck the wall, bounced twice and went still. The boy called to the dog. For a long time nothing happened.
Then came a scramble of feet, a delighted shout and the same ball striking the wall again.
Lina laughed before she knew she was going to.
She stayed where she was, listening to the game continue.
Chapter 11 — The Other Chair
Lina saw the blue bicycle again three weeks after she moved.
It passed her beside the square with a parcel tied to its carrier. The rider was watching the cart ahead and did not look at her. One of the loose ends of string lifted and fell against the blue frame.
She turned far enough to watch it go round the corner.
There was nothing in its place outside the shop. She had known that before she saw it being ridden. For several days she had been taking the other side of the square, where the window of the baker's gave her something else to look at.
Today she had bread to buy.
She joined the queue and asked for the round loaf. The woman behind the counter put her hand on the longer one.
“That one, please.”
The round one had a darker crust. Rilla liked the end pieces.
Lina had asked her to come for supper when she returned the keys, eight days earlier. She had carried both back to the green door on the last day of the agreement. Rilla had put them in a drawer and asked whether the annex was warm enough.
Lina had said yes. Then, before they began talking about somebody else's rooms, she had named an evening and asked Rilla to bring herself.
Now there were two places on the table and a pan refusing to get hot as quickly as Lina wanted.
The cloth across the window had become a curtain of sorts. She had hemmed the bottom, but one side still hung lower. Rilla would notice. Lina decided she was not going to point it out first.
The tall washing pot stood on the lower shelf, beside the space she had left for things she did not yet own. She had learned to reach around it without looking.
The knock came while she was turning the fish.
“Come in,” she called, then remembered the door was locked.
By the time she opened it, Rilla had found a sheltered place to stand and was inspecting the lettering on Corven's shop window.
Rilla held up a small jar.
“I've brought jam. You needn't eat it with the fish.”
“Good.”
They went in. Lina took the jar and set it on the bench. Rilla began undoing her coat, looked toward the window and said nothing about the curtain.
“That chair,” Lina said.
“Are they different?”
“That one wobbles less.”
Rilla sat. Lina put a folded scrap of card beneath the other chair's short foot and sat opposite her for the length of time it took to remember the pan.
“I'll be a minute.”
“Take two. I can see you.”
Lina turned back to the cooker. The fish had held together and the potatoes were ready. She had made more food than two people needed because she had begun imagining what would happen if the fish stuck.
Lina served them.
For the first few minutes they talked about the food. Rilla asked where she had bought the fish. Lina asked whether the kitchen tap at the green-door house still made the sound it had begun making just before she left.
“Only if I turn it too far.”
“You always turn it too far.”
“It's a tap.”
Lina laughed. She had missed being able to provoke that particular tone without anyone becoming cross.
The press began in the shop.
Rilla stopped with her fork above the plate.
“Is that it?”
“Yes.”
They listened to it. After a while Rilla went on eating.
“That could get on my nerves.”
“It gets on mine.”
Rilla looked at her.
“Sometimes,” Lina added, though she had not needed to defend the word.
The first week she had told everybody who asked that the room was good. It was good. She had a year, her own door, a cooking bench she did not have to clear of somebody else's supper. At the laundry she had caught herself giving the same little list before anyone asked for it.
“When I've been up early, I want to sleep. I knew what it sounded like. I still don't like it when I'm tired.”
“Have you said?”
“I've asked Corven to tell me when he knows there's a long job. He can usually say. He can't promise the press won't run.”
“Would he?”
“No. And I didn't ask him to. I've started doing the washing when it runs. Then I can stop when it stops, if I'm home.”
“That's a lot of washing if he gets busy.”
Lina smiled.
“I can sit down with a book as well.”
They ate while the press continued. When it stopped, Lina heard Rilla set down her glass with a clarity that made her realise how much sound she had been ignoring.
“The person in your old room reads at breakfast,” Rilla said.
Lina looked up.
Rilla had told her there would be somebody after the six weeks ended. The new occupant had come the following day, after Lina's term was over.
“What does he read?”
“I haven't asked.”
“Does he eat the peas?”
“I haven't given him peas.”
“You gave me peas.”
“You helped shell them.”
Lina could picture the table at breakfast, the spare chair pulled nearer, a page turned where she used to put her elbow.
“I'm glad you've got someone,” she said.
Rilla gave her a dry look.
“I've got someone paying for a room.”
Lina cut the potato in half though it did not need cutting.
“He seems pleasant,” Rilla said.
“Good.”
For a little while Rilla talked about a woman she had met at the market, who had bought a hat and then spent the walk home explaining why she should not have bought it. Lina listened and began to laugh before the story reached the hat blowing off.
“Did she get it back?”
“She did. Then she said she should have let it go.”
“After all that?”
“She put it back on.”
Lina leaned back. The short chair foot slid off the card, and she put one hand on the table.
“I'm going to fix that.”
“Not now.”
“Not now.”
She pushed the card back with her shoe.
After supper they washed the dishes together because there were not many and neither wanted to sit while the other stood.
Rilla dried the tall pot, which Lina had used for rinsing the cloths before putting it away. She held it level with the cupboard opening.
“You've got a place for it.”
“I measured it.”
“I can see.”
She put it on the shelf. Lina took the plate she had been using beneath the mint, washed the mark from its edge and put it back beneath the same dented tin.
The window was open above them. Somewhere beyond the yard the boy was trying to explain a game to another child. His instructions became louder each time the other child did something different.
“He doesn't want to play that one,” Rilla said.
They finished the dishes. Lina made tea and opened the jam. There was enough bread left for each of them to have another piece.
Rilla told her she was going to play cards with a neighbour on the next evening she had free. She had been asked twice before and had said she would see.
“Do you know the game?” Lina asked.
“Not properly.”
“Will they mind?”
“They keep asking. They'll have to put up with it.”
She spread the jam carefully into one corner of the crust.
Lina looked at the opposite chair. Since moving in, she had used it mostly for her coat. Tonight Rilla's coat hung from the back, and Rilla sat with one foot tucked beneath her, finishing the end of the loaf.
“I'd like you to come again,” Lina said.
“I can.”
They chose another evening. This time Rilla said she would cook, and Lina said she would bring bread. They disagreed about which loaf until Rilla admitted she had eaten most of the crust.
When she left, Lina went with her as far as the square. The air was cooler than it had looked from the window. Rilla put her hands into her coat pockets and said the walk was doing her good, which did not make either of them walk faster.
At the corner they parted. Lina went down the other side of the square, past the bicycle shop. The window held two lamps, a pump and a bell with a price tied to it.
She stopped to read the price. It was the sort of bell she would want. There was no point buying it yet.
From farther along the lane came the sound of Corven shutting the shop. She waited while he brought the last paper crate inside, then went to her own door.
The key turned more easily now. Inside, she hung her coat, took the folded card from beneath the chair and laid it on the table where she would remember the loose foot tomorrow.
There was a little jam left on Rilla's knife. Lina wiped it up with the last piece of bread.
Chapter 12 — The Map in the Book
Edda found Eliza outside the baker's a few days later and asked whether he had ten minutes to look at a map.
“What map?”
“It's in a book.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere, at this rate.”
She had a small parcel of bread and a face which suggested that somebody had wasted more than ten minutes already. He took the parcel while she put on her glove.
“I've got time,” he said.
They walked back together. She complained about a cart that had been left across the pavement, then stopped to look in a window she usually passed. There was a blue bowl inside, the colour almost gone where the glaze ran thin around the rim.
“That's a nice thing,” she said.
He looked with her. After a little while she moved on.
At the house she took back the bread and went to the kitchen. Eliza hung his coat where he usually did. He had been there since the afternoon with the chair, though his recent visits had mostly ended while he was still wearing it.
The front room was warm. Edda's chair stood beside the window, the little table at its left. A book lay open beneath her glasses. The green strip of cloth showed between the pages farther back.
He waited beside the other chair while she returned with the bread on a plate.
“Sit down. You'll see better.”
He sat.
She picked up the book, found the folded map and spread it across both their knees.
“There.”
Her finger rested on a road drawn through a patch of trees.
“The inn's here. The ferry's there. He walks from one to the other before breakfast, carrying a trunk.”
“Who does?”
“The man who shouldn't have gone in the first place.”
Eliza followed the road. It wound through the trees, crossed a stream and went back almost as far as it had come.
“Perhaps he starts early.”
“He oversleeps. It's quite important.”
“Is there another road?”
“If there is, they haven't put it on the map they made me unfold.”
He bent closer. At the edge of the paper, beyond the inn, was a small mark that might have been a path or a fault in the printing.
“That could go round the hill.”
“Then he wouldn't meet the woman at the bridge.”
“Does he have to?”
Edda looked at him.
“I have read some of it.”
He laughed.
“You must like it if you're this angry with it.”
“I want to know what happens. That's different.”
“Have you looked at the end?”
“Certainly not.”
She said it so promptly that he looked at her again.
“Only the last page,” she admitted. “There weren't any names on it.”
They tried to fold the map. One part had to go inward before the rest would close. Edda remembered the direction after they had both tried the other one.
The book settled between them. Eliza leaned back, still smiling, and noticed that he had not put his feet where he generally put them. He moved one out from beneath the chair.
Outside, a woman stopped at the gate to rearrange the bags on her arm. Edda watched until she had managed it.
“I thought you might come and tell me about the room,” she said.
“I told you Lina had moved.”
“In the doorway.”
“She's been there a few weeks now. She says the press is annoying when she's tired.”
“I should think it would be.”
“She likes having her own cooking place.”
Edda nodded.
He had the rest of the account ready: the work finished, the dates kept, who had paid for what. She was looking out of the window.
“I haven't seen it,” she said. “Perhaps she'll ask me sometime.”
“Perhaps.”
He let the rest wait. He did not know whether Lina would want visitors, or whether she and Edda would have much to say once they were there.
“Were you staying away because of what I said?”
“I was angry for a while.”
She waited.
“Then I didn't know how to sit here without making you feel I was waiting for a different answer.”
“I'm not giving one.”
“I'm not asking.”
She looked at him long enough for him to stop looking at the bread.
“I asked you to go for a bit.”
“You did.”
He could remember the chair catching in the doorway and the effort of getting it back. He could remember her saying he was hard work more easily than he could remember what she had said immediately after.
“The other visits counted,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I wouldn't have spent yesterday arguing with this book if I'd known I could argue with you,” Edda said.
He smiled, but she had already turned back to the window. For a moment he wished he had asked what she was reading on one of those short visits. There would have been time.
“I haven't read it,” he said.
“You've managed very well so far.”
The kettle took longer than Edda expected. Eliza went to the kitchen when she called for the cups and found her looking at the fire beneath it.
“It is on,” she said.
“I can see.”
“I was telling myself.”
He took down two cups. The drawer opened when she pulled it, and neither mentioned it.
“There should be butter.”
He found it where she pointed. They took the tray into the front room and discovered that the book occupied the only convenient place to put it.
Eliza lifted the book. Edda shifted the little table an inch nearer.
When they had poured the tea, she read him the paragraph about the trunk. There was no quoted distance, only the man's hurry and a mention of the bells at the ferry.
“He could have been walking all morning,” Eliza said.
“Then when does he eat?”
“Perhaps that's why he's cross when he gets there.”
She found the next page.
“He is cross.”
“There.”
“It doesn't explain the bridge.”
“You haven't told me what happens at the bridge.”
“You said I mustn't spoil it.”
“I didn't.”
“You were going to.”
He began to laugh and had to wait before drinking. Edda looked pleased enough with this that he wanted to stay longer.
She found a passage near the beginning and gave him the book. He read while she finished her tea. The first page was mostly weather. On the second, somebody arrived with news they would not give until the third.
Edda began watching him instead of the window.
“Well?”
“I'm waiting for him to say it.”
“You wait.”
He did. By the time the visitor reached the end of his explanation, Eliza wanted to know what was in the trunk.
“You can borrow it after me,” Edda said.
“When will that be?”
“Sooner if you stop making me find the map.”
He gave it back. She put the green cloth where she had left off, with a little of it showing above the cover.
They talked about a woman Edda had seen in the market, then about a meal Eliza had tried to make without checking whether he had enough flour. He had finished making something, though it was difficult to say whether it had been the thing he began.
Edda asked what he had used instead. When he told her, she laughed so sharply that a crumb went down the wrong way. He waited while she recovered, holding out the cup when she reached for it.
“I ate it,” he said.
“Of course you did.”
The light had moved across the rug by the time he stood. He had been there for more than an hour. Edda held the plate toward him for the last small piece of bread.
“Take it. I've got the rest in the kitchen.”
He ate it while finding his coat.
At the door she asked whether he would want to hear what happened at the bridge.
“After I've read it.”
“Then you'll have to be quick when I finish.”
He turned to answer, but she was already going back toward the chair. The book opened against her knees before he had put his arm through the second sleeve.
“Eliza?”
He looked in again.
“Leave the door to this room open, would you? I like hearing who's about.”
He left it as she asked and let himself out.
Chapter 13 — The Rest of the Afternoon
At the next concert, Eliza found that he had an opinion about the music before Sera asked for it.
They had reached the interval. The players were leaving their chairs.
“I liked the first one,” he said.
“So did I.”
“I thought the second might have finished a little earlier.”
Sera turned toward him.
“That's the one I liked best.”
“The last part?”
“Especially the last part.”
He looked back at the empty chairs. During that part he had begun wondering whether the tune had lost its way. She had leaned forward and listened as if someone had begun saying something she had been waiting to hear.
“I kept expecting it to stop,” he said.
“I was glad it didn't.”
Eliza put his programme in his coat pocket and followed Sera outside.
It was warmer than at the previous concert. They passed the queue at the stall and found a low wall where they could stand in the light.
Sera began to hum the part she meant. At first he could remember only the lower sound beneath it. Then she reached a turn he recognised.
“That,” he said. “It did that before.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted the other part to come back.”
“It does.”
“Not soon enough.”
She laughed and stopped humming.
“You liked the first one. I get this one.”
He smiled. They had each bought their own ticket several days before, choosing the seats together at the window. He had wanted to sit a little farther back this time. She had wanted to see the violin player's hands. They had found two seats from which both seemed possible.
Inside, somebody rang the bell for the second half.
“Come on,” Sera said.
The next piece began so quietly that a movement in the audience sounded loud beside it. Eliza could hear the scrape of a shoe, then nothing except the players. He watched the violinist's hand move along the neck of the instrument. A note continued after he had expected her to need another breath, and he remembered that she was not singing.
He had to suppress a laugh at himself.
Sera glanced at him. He shook his head, still smiling, and she turned back.
There was a part near the end which he liked enough to want it repeated. He could not have explained what made it different from the other part he had wanted to end. He listened for it when the music changed. It did not come again.
After the applause, he remained seated while people began moving into the aisle.
“What?” Sera asked.
“I'm trying to keep it.”
“Which bit?”
He hummed a few uncertain notes.
“Later than that,” she said.
He tried again. She listened with her head slightly turned, then hummed what she thought he meant.
“Yes.”
“We can do that outside. These people would like to get past.”
He got up and apologised to the couple waiting beside them. The man said he would have minded less if Eliza had chosen an easier tune.
They all laughed.
The violin player had come out by the side door. She stood with her case beside her, talking to a man who held two programmes and seemed determined to ask a question about every name on them.
Sera waited until he finished. Eliza stood a little apart, looking at the notices for later music.
When Sera called him over, she introduced him by name. The player shook his hand and asked whether he had enjoyed the afternoon.
“Very much.”
“Most of it,” Sera said.
The player laughed.
“That's more than some of us can say after rehearsing it.”
Eliza wanted to ask about the part he had been trying to remember. Before he could find a way of describing it, she began telling Sera about a rehearsal which had been moved twice and a chair which had disappeared between the two arrangements.
He listened. She spoke with her free hand while the other remained on the case. When somebody called from inside the hall, she looked round and said she had to go.
“Next time,” Sera told her.
They watched her carry the case through the door.
“Would you come to another?” Sera asked.
“Yes.”
“Even with that second piece?”
“I might like it more if I knew how long I was waiting.”
“I'd like to hear it again.”
She took the programme from him and checked the next date. They could ask about seats later. There was still a good part of the afternoon left.
At the corner he turned toward the tram stop they usually used. Sera stopped beside the route board.
“I've wanted to go up there,” she said.
She pointed to the last stop, beside the public gardens. Eliza knew the name. He had never been there.
“Today?”
“If you want to.”
He looked down the street. The tram was still several minutes away.
“I haven't brought anything to eat.”
“We can get something on the way.”
They bought two small pastries, which the woman put in one paper bag. Eliza carried it to the stop. Sera held their place while he went back for the programme he had left beside the till.
The tram arrived with almost every seat taken. They stood until the second stop, then moved into a place beside the window.
Past the streets he knew, the shops became less frequent. A boy on the pavement tried to run beside the tram, gave up and waved as if that had been his intention all along. Sera waved back.
They passed a yard full of long boards, a house with a red door and a row of gardens so narrow that the flowers seemed to be waiting to go inside. Eliza leaned across to see a man lifting a blanket off a line. The man shook it once, filling the whole garden with a moving square of yellow.
“Do you know him?” Sera asked.
“No.”
“You looked as if you did.”
“I was looking at the blanket.”
She leaned over in time to see it disappear through the door.
“It was yellow,” he told her.
“I've missed everything.”
The conductor called the last stop.
The gardens were smaller than Eliza had imagined. The first path ended at a bed of plants with names he did not recognise. The second went uphill past a bench already occupied by two people and a sleeping dog.
Sera chose the path with trees.
He went beside her, carrying the pastry bag by the folded top. One of the pastries had begun marking the paper with butter.
There was another bench farther up. They sat at opposite ends of the same slat, leaving the bag between them until Sera moved it onto her lap.
“Which did you want?” she asked.
“The one with the sugar.”
“They both have sugar.”
“Then I've made an easy choice.”
She gave him one. The filling was warmer than he expected, and he had to wait with his mouth slightly open before he could speak.
Sera watched him.
“Good?”
He nodded.
She took a smaller bite of hers.
From the bench they could see the upper windows of the houses below and a little of the tram line. Someone was cutting a hedge on the far side of the gardens. The clipping sound stopped whenever the person doing it moved farther along.
Eliza ate slowly. He brushed sugar from his coat and found that he had brushed most of it into a pocket.
“That'll be pleasant later,” he said.
She gave him the empty part of the paper bag to catch it. He turned the pocket out while she held the bag open, both of them watching as if there might be something more interesting than sugar inside.
A small screw dropped into the paper.
Sera looked at it.
“Were you expecting that?”
“No.”
“Does it belong to something?”
“I hope so.”
He put it in his other pocket.
Sera finished her pastry and leaned back. A patch of light moved over her sleeve as the leaves shifted above them.
“Which way after this?” he asked.
She looked along the path.
“I want to see what's round there.”
“So do I.”
Neither stood yet.
Eliza began trying to recall the part he had liked. He kept arriving at the same few notes and losing the rest. Sera listened to two attempts before joining in.
“There,” she said when he found it.
He went too far and spoiled the ending.
She laughed. He laughed with her, then asked her to start a little earlier.
She did. He waited through the first few notes, then joined her.