The Window Beside the Till

The white notice covering the poster had come loose at one side. Each time the front door opened, the photograph showed beneath it. Vera had put the paper up too hastily on Wednesday. Now a cold draught caught it and tapped the bottom corner against the glass.

She tore off another piece of tape and stood holding it. Outside, a woman pointed something out to her companion. She bent to read the strip of announcement still showing below the white sheet. Vera put the tape back and opened the door.

‘The presentation isn't going ahead for now.’

The woman straightened. ‘I'd heard. But it's still up.’

‘There's a notice over it.’

Vera heard how petty that sounded as soon as she said it. The woman glanced through the glass at the curling corner and nodded, evidently not intending to argue. She had come for coffee. Her companion followed, asking whether they could not simply look at the few photographs already here.

‘No,’ Vera said. ‘I haven't got them. And I haven't agreed permission to show them here.’

She found them a table. Rather than explain the entire investigation, she took their order. As she went back, the man was still looking at the window. He had not bought the photographs, moved them or described them wrongly. He had come because of her announcement.

Friday afternoons were different. More bags belonging to people who were not heading straight back to the office; less hurry over a second cup. A group wanted to pay separately for their rolls. Vera obliged, lost count when someone changed their mind and began again. The oven beeped behind her. At the end of the bar her diary lay open at Bente's appointment.

Her phone was on the kitchen shelf. Still she heard it every time the fridge started, a vibration that was not there. Bente would let them know whether her buyer had agreed not to pass anything on. Anouk was waiting too. An unanswered request took up almost as much room as a conversation.

Vera closed the diary as she took out the rolls. She had imagined her own evening: a few neighbours, coffee, something about the old station, people coming who owned none of the pictures themselves. Suspension had taken that possibility from more than the foundation. She had pictured the empty space in her own room, filled with extra chairs.

At half past five a man came to the bar and said he had not given her his number to be told now that there was “perhaps something wrong”. He did not raise his voice. That made it harder. The third name on her list. The missing digit had been a nine; on Wednesday evening Milan had known whom she meant. Vera had finally spoken to him on Thursday and sent the notice.

‘You said it was definite,’ he said.

Vera did not deny giving that impression. He had asked to bring his neighbour, who used to work at the station. She had said how nice it would be if he came. Now the neighbour had arranged a lift. Not a ticket sold: an evening in someone else's diary.

‘I shouldn't have made it a firm invitation.’

‘But you did.’

She nodded. Another customer came alongside with an empty plate. Vera took it, put it down and asked whether the man could write down his neighbour's name. She would explain the cancellation herself. He shook his head.

‘I'll do it. He doesn't need a story from a stranger about photographs that aren't hers.’

Vera felt her face heat. She had prepared for anger about Dorus. What she got stayed much closer to her own counter. She offered coffee; he said he would pay. She charged him, rather than force a gesture on him.

An hour later, with the tables briefly empty, she took down the poster. Not just the white sheet; not another strip of tape. One corner stuck and tore when she pulled too quickly. She worked the rest free with a damp cloth. The glass behind the photograph was cleaner than the surrounding pane. She could not simply paste a new subject there without the old edge showing.

She washed the window, stopping at the café lettering on the next pane. That was inside the glass and had nothing to do with the poster. She put the factual notice beside the till, where anyone asking could read it. The old poster stayed out of the recycling until she had told the foundation it was down.

Milan arrived at seven with the corner of a textbook sticking from his bag. He hung his coat and asked whether they still needed the oven on. Vera had the usual handover ready: stock, two reserved tables, no fresh batch of soup. She told him about the man too.

‘I know the neighbour he means,’ Milan said. ‘He comes in on Saturdays sometimes.’

‘I hadn't thought he'd arrange transport.’

Milan looked at the empty window. ‘Even if he'd only kept the evening free. That counts too, doesn't it?’

Vera drew up a chair. Her shift was finished, but she had not gone. She fetched her phone from the kitchen: two ordinary notifications, nothing from Bente. When she returned, Milan noticed the poster in her hand.

‘What do I say if someone suggests doing it without the foundation?’

‘We're not.’

‘Last week you told someone there'd be something here whatever happened. I was standing beside you.’

She knew the conversation. She had smoothed the uncertainty over by offering her own space: if necessary, something small here. In her mind the café was a solution costing nobody else anything. Milan had been there with the washing-up and the evening list.

‘And I hadn't asked whether it fitted your shift,’ she said.

‘That too.’

He put two clean glasses on the bar. A customer at the door asked for a table. Milan showed him one and took his order. Vera waited. The perfect expression of insight would not finish this conversation and let her leave him to an ordinary evening.

When he returned she asked what small activity they could manage without special staffing. He shrugged. ‘A normal table. People paying for coffee. We already do that.’

‘Without photographs.’

‘Without fetching somebody else's photographs after all, you mean.’

Vera gave a short laugh. ‘Yes.’

She opened her diary. Not another event to fill the same advertised evening as though nothing had happened. Another time, an ordinary Saturday afternoon before closing, a table for people who wanted to talk about their own work at the station. No archive exhibition, no promise of finding everyone in a photograph. Anyone bringing something would keep it themselves. She had to ask whether people wanted it before announcing anything.

Milan looked at the page. He needed a break on Saturdays too. Vera put her name against the cover and crossed out the extra chairs she had nearly written in.

‘And after closing you could—’

Milan put his hand beside the diary. Not on it, not to slam it shut. ‘After closing I'm off.’

‘I only meant helping put things back.’

‘That's work too.’

Vera looked at the bag with the book, still against the stool. She knew he was studying on Thursdays. Mainly she now knew the hour when his course prevented him covering for her. She had never asked what it required of him the rest of the week.

‘What have you got on Saturday?’

He took his hand away. ‘I don't have to justify it first, do I?’

His face changed as he said it. A trace of weariness, not all from tonight. Vera picked up her pen again. Clear up before three, she wrote beside the proposed table. She would put the last things away herself after the normal closing jobs.

‘No. You don't have to tell me what you're doing.’

He took an order. She did not stand behind the bar making the conversation follow him from table to table. When he returned she drew the diary to her side. He saw the new line and nodded.

Only then did he say he was meeting a classmate on Saturday afternoon to prepare a practical assignment. Electrical engineering. They had to work out a plan and explain it in class. Not a placement yet, not paid work. Next teaching block he wanted to find somewhere to get practical experience. Not just finish evening classes and hope an employer appeared.

‘I haven't found anything,’ he said. ‘But I need to leave time for it.’

Vera wanted to ask how many days that would take him away from here. She let the question wait and indicated his book. ‘Did you think I'd ask you to check my sockets?’

‘You asked about the oven last week. As a joke.’

She remembered. The oven had failed to heat once; she had pointed to his course and said he might become her repairman. He had told her he was still training. She had not treated it as a proper answer.

‘I'll get the repair engineer for that.’

‘Please. I'd like to know what I'm doing before someone has to rely on it.’

He pushed the bag further under the stool, out of people's feet. Vera asked him to let her know when his availability changed. Not to promise now that she could have every Tuesday evening. He wanted to discuss it in good time, he said, like other changes to the rota. She pencilled in a brief staff meeting the following week, with no new customer offer beside it.

One of the reserved groups arrived. Milan showed them to their table. Vera brought the glasses he had set out, then went back to her chair. She could stay ten more minutes before her call, without proving herself indispensable to his ordinary shift. No extra hours added; she must not promise more than the usual space allowed.

‘I don't want this in the window yet,’ he said.

She capped her pen. ‘Neither do I.’

That had only been true for a minute. She left it there. He did not need the exact speed of her change of mind.

The woman from the afternoon came back for two coffees to take away. Her companion waited by the window outside. The window looked quieter, she said. Could Vera say one more thing about the advertised evening? The woman checked her watch. Briefly.

There would be no replacement photograph evening. Any later small public selection, properly arranged, belonged with Anouk and the foundation, not automatically here. The woman nodded. Was the café still open in the evenings, though?

‘Yes.’

‘We might just come for coffee sometime, then.’

No intention of rescuing the business. Vera charged her for the coffees and handed back her change. Ordinary sums. No list on which she could set this order against the lost photograph evening.

Bente rang at a quarter to eight. Could Vera sit at the back table for ten minutes? Milan said yes, provided she did not keep answering his stock questions at the same time. She took her diary somewhere the conversation need not travel the length of the bar.

The buyer had agreed not to sell anything on before they spoke. On Monday morning Bente would go through the sales entry and confirmation with Anouk. She admitted she had dreaded this. At first she had hoped to resolve a misunderstanding between herself and Dorus. Now she had had to tell a customer he might have bought material the seller had no authority to sell.

‘I didn't want him hearing it as a rumour,’ she said. ‘That's why I've spoken to him first.’

Vera wrote half past nine. Could Anouk speak to him directly? Bente would arrange that with the buyer on Monday. He had agreed to hold on to the material, not yet to having his details passed on. Vera would tell Anouk exactly that, without supplying a buyer's name of her own.

She rang Anouk straight afterwards. Anouk answered with her mouth full, swallowed and asked her to start again. Vera laughed because she could not recall her opening sentence. The second was simpler: Monday, the sold group; the buyer was keeping it together for now.

At least that was something real, Anouk said. They would cycle together at the same time as last Monday. Vera noted it. As she closed the diary, Milan was taking drinks to a reserved table. She did not add the interested visitor's name to a new call list without permission. She put the old poster in her bag and went home.