What Bas Recognised

‘Not that chair,’ Ria said. They had arrived just before five.

Vera stood holding it. She had meant to pull it up to the table beside Bas. Ria pointed to the other side, where the window would light Vera's face. Bas looked up from his newspaper, saw the chair and indicated where he wanted it himself. Vera put it down. Her knees met the wood beneath the low table.

Bas shifted his own chair back a little. ‘You might as well be comfortable while you're visiting.’

She could understand him perfectly. She had not expected to, and was ashamed before she had quite decided what she was ashamed of. Ria took her coat into the hall. Anouk brought out the laptop; Tine came in behind her, a folded shopping list caught in the wrong sleeve as she took off her coat.

‘If I get home without potatoes, the list is here,’ she said.

Bas pointed to the clock. How long did they think they would need? Vera showed him the sheet she had prepared: a few work photographs, no more than an hour, stop sooner if he wanted. She nearly added that she did not have to be back until seven, but he was asking how much of his time they needed, not how much she had paid for. He read it, looked at Anouk and nodded.

Milan had started at the café at three. Vera had not sprung the afternoon on him between orders. They had confirmed the hours on Tuesday; today she had left the evening stock ready. As she went out he had pointed after her with a bread knife: seven, not a quarter past. She might have agreed so emphatically that it became a joke. Instead she had simply said she would be there.

Anouk put the laptop on an upturned sturdy box to raise the screen. She turned it towards Bas, who cleaned his glasses and studied the first photograph. Ria poured coffee at another table. For now the small prints stayed in the folder.

Vera thought she had written two separate questions. When Bas read them, she saw one long sentence asking whether he recognised the people and knew the date and which shift the work had been done on. He looked at the screen, then at the paper, and raised his pen.

‘Which?’

‘The whole—’ Vera began.

Anouk put a hand beside her mouth, waited until Bas looked at her and said she wanted to start with what was happening in the picture. Vera took back the sheet. On the reverse she wrote: What are they doing here? She underlined here and passed it to him.

He read it, gave a snort and pointed to the bucket beside the table legs. ‘Not drinking, I hope.’

Ria was just coming in with the coffee. Tine laughed. Vera looked up from the screen and found Bas watching to see whether she had got the joke. She laughed too, this time because she had, not because everyone else was laughing.

Anouk enlarged the image. An arm, the edge of a cloth, a bucket; in the background a plank not yet in its place. Bas indicated the next picture. Vera went too fast. He raised his hand. Back one. He pushed his glasses further up his nose and, rather than lean closer, asked Anouk to enlarge it again.

‘That had to go back,’ he said, pointing to the equipment along the canteen wall. ‘They needed room there.’

Under Vera's question Anouk wrote: Was this part of your normal shift? She passed him the sheet. He read it and shook his head. On Vera's paper he wrote: afternoon off. Then beneath it: not paid as a shift.

Tine, across the table, moved her hand. She waited for him to look at her and said that was on her old list too. She reached for the paper, but Anouk asked whether Bas had anything else to point out first. He tapped the corner of the table in the photograph.

‘The cupboard went there later. Not the big cupboard. The low one.’

Ria raised a finger as Vera was about to answer. Not a rebuke, Vera realised: Bas had written more. She read the new line. They had moved the equipment out of the way. In the next photograph the bucket was gone. Anouk had not chosen that picture for the public selection. This digital working image came from her own scans, made before she entrusted the archive to Dorus; she still did not have the negatives back. Bas traced a line towards the empty place with his pen, without drawing on the screen.

Vera wrote: Taking it away?

He read it, shook his head, a little impatient now, and wrote: putting it back. The bucket had gone for the moment; the work was not finished. Vera looked at the two photographs together. She had already made an ending out of something missing.

Ria passed her a cup. They had to stop looking to drink. The conversation slowed and found a different rhythm. Tine explained how all the descriptions had come back to her because someone had dressed them up. Bas saw her speaking and asked what she had said. She wrote: caption says night shift. He read it and wrinkled his nose.

‘Night? With that light?’

Anouk pointed out that the light in this print alone was not enough to tell them. Bas looked again, conceded the point without enthusiasm and wrote afternoon off once more, larger this time.

Vera's next written question was: Which day was it? He gave a date at once. Tine took her list, hesitated and glanced at Anouk. Vera felt the room about to divide: Bas with an answer, three women discussing why it was wrong without including him. She moved her cup and put a blank sheet in front of Tine.

Tine wrote the date from her list and the job beside it. She laid it next to his words. Bas read both. His brow creased.

He repeated his date, as though saying it again might make it hold. Then he asked for the next image. Anouk showed him, followed by the little overview of the sequence. Tine tapped her description of the afternoon work. She wrote her question alongside: did he mean the other occasion, when equipment had been left in almost the same place?

Bas studied the photographs, searching an edge for something Vera could not see. After a while he pointed to the plank behind the bucket and said a name Tine recognised. Three short sentences passed back and forth in writing. Vera sat with her hands round her empty cup and resisted asking for each one to be read aloud.

At last Bas crossed out his date. He wrote the other beside it, adding a question mark himself.

‘I get the days mixed up,’ he said, looking at Vera rather than Ria. ‘Not the work.’

Vera nodded too quickly. She took her paper and wrote what she thought she had understood: work on an afternoon off, equipment moved aside temporarily and put back later, date from Tine's list. Bas read it and crossed out later. He wrote afterwards, then pointed to two consecutive pictures.

‘Later could mean next week,’ Anouk said.

Vera corrected it. She had meant to be careful. Now she mainly wanted him not to feel he must spend another hour putting her careless wording right. He took the sheet, read it again and gave it neither a drawn thumbs-up nor a neat tick. He put it on the table and slid it towards Anouk.

‘Put that in, then.’

Anouk said she would change the description. She turned the screen back and opened the text accompanying the work photographs. Vera watched her delete the sentence about the night-time task. A plainer line replaced it: colleagues putting equipment back on an afternoon off. She took the date from Tine's list and noted the reference for herself. Bas asked for the screen again. Anouk showed him the new line and waited.

He read slowly. Vera looked round the room: the newspaper on the other chair, a chip in the wooden armrest, a plant with two large leaves, one touching the window. Not everything here belonged to their visit. A phone buzzed in the hall. Ria went to check and brought back a short message for Bas. His appointment the following morning had moved by half an hour. He entered the new time on his calendar himself and came back to the table.

Tine found her shopping list when she pulled her cardigan forward. She had to go. Bas asked what had happened to the bridge, not because he expected it to reopen, but because Tine knew someone who had seen the barriers go up. She wrote him a brief account. The fence was where it should be. People were using the underpass. Fond memories did not keep an old route open, she said, and Bas made a face as though she had been telling him that for forty years.

At the door Tine asked Anouk to send the revised description. She did not want to find they had approved a fresh mistake between them. Anouk promised. Tine left, potatoes still on her list.

Ria began clearing the cups. Vera got up to help, but Bas tapped the table. He wanted to show her something. On his phone he opened the signal-box film and paused it at the left-hand window. Below was a message asking where the cupboard had stood. Vera knew his answer, but he pointed it out again. Not at the scratch: a little further over. Two fingers slid an imaginary cupboard across the table.

‘That cupboard didn't make the window stick,’ he said.

Vera laughed. ‘It was managing that without my help.’

He asked her to repeat it while he looked at her. She did, moving her hand just above the table as if trying the window again. He saw the gesture and laughed too. Ria came back with a cloth and asked what was so funny. This time Vera let Bas answer.

They stayed another quarter of an hour. When Anouk closed the laptop, Bas asked for the few work pictures with the corrected caption. She wrote down which files she would send. He kept that sheet and returned the other questions to Vera. She filed them with her notes, not among the prints.

It was darker outside than Vera had expected. Five past six on her phone. Still time for an unhurried ride back. Anouk was staying to arrange the pictures with Ria. At the garden gate she asked whether Vera thought the visit had helped.

Vera thought of Bas's immediate date, her own first question, the easy sentence about the night. ‘We'd have left the wrong caption otherwise.’

Anouk nodded. ‘And that would have been my work too.’

At the café Milan had stacked the empty soft-drink crates beside the back door. He looked at Vera, then pointed to the clock. A quarter to seven. She took off her coat, asked what they had run out of and switched on the kettle while he fetched his bag. She would see the revised text on her laptop at home later. For now the two people by the window needed a fresh pot of tea. They knew nothing about the photographs and did want to catch their train.