The Other Workshop

Eddie had grown a beard.

Arthur had last seen him at the funeral, clean-shaven in a suit that made him appear to have been dressed by someone who had not measured him. The beard improved him, which Arthur resented in a quiet, manageable way.

He came out of the workshop with a rag in his hand.

“You found us.”

“Eventually,” Arthur said.

“I did say not to trust the satnav.”

“You said turn left at the red postbox. It’s been painted black.”

“Has it?” Eddie looked towards the lane, as if he might settle the matter from where he stood. “Well. They shouldn’t do that.”

Clara hugged him. It was not a big hug. There was care in the way she approached it, and Arthur felt ashamed of noticing with relief.

The workshop occupied a former farm building beside two caravans and a low cottage. A sign by the gate said REPAIRS CONSIDERED. Someone had added IN MODERATION underneath.

“That’s new,” Clara said.

“Man brought me an electric toothbrush. I had to draw a line.”

Inside were a lawnmower, three bicycles, a radio, a kitchen chair and a long workbench clear enough to suggest Eddie had made an effort. Arthur looked at the tools. Some were good. Most were where he would have put them himself.

“Want to bring the top in?” Eddie asked. “It’ll be drier.”

“It’s dry in the van.”

“Fine.”

“There are straps.”

“Good.”

They stood for a moment demonstrating that neither required anything from the other.

Clara picked up her bag.

“Where are we sleeping?”

“You’re in the cottage. Spare room. Arthur, there’s the caravan. I’ve had the heater on.”

Arthur looked at the nearer caravan. It was cream, with a brown stripe and the faint, apologetic lean of something that had once had tyres.

“Perfect,” he said.

“I can have the caravan,” Clara offered.

“No need.”

“It’s actually quite nice,” Eddie said.

“I said perfect.”

Clara took her bag into the cottage. Eddie wiped his hands again.

“She looks tired,” he said.

“Starting a business.”

“Yes.”

There was something in the yes Arthur couldn’t place.

“Don’t suppose it’s easy,” Eddie added.

“No.”

Arthur went to the caravan.

It was, annoyingly, quite nice. Eddie had put fresh bedding on the narrow bed and a jug of water beside it. There was an electric heater, a lamp and a paperback with a cracked spine. The curtains had been sewn from fabric patterned with lemons.

Arthur sat on the bed. A spring complained beneath him.

He had not slept away from the house since Helen died. Before that, his nights away had been at the hospital or in the chair beside her bed at home. The caravan’s unfamiliar noises seemed to demand an introduction.

He took his washbag out, then put it back. He checked that his phone was charging. He read the first paragraph of the paperback three times without learning the name of the man in it.

Outside, Clara laughed at something Eddie said.

Arthur closed the book.

He had known, when he married Helen, that another man occupied a permanent room in their lives. He had accepted this in theory. In practice, he had fitted school shoes, sat through parents’ evenings, made packed lunches and collected a furious fourteen-year-old from a party where the promised adult supervision turned out to be a twenty-year-old asleep upstairs.

Eddie had sent postcards. Not always. Sometimes there had been no word for months.

Arthur had never kept a written record of the difference. He was beginning to suspect that he had kept one anyway.

At dinner, Eddie served a vegetable stew and bread he admitted buying.

“Recipe said make it the day before. So it’s theoretically better than it was yesterday.”

“Did you eat it yesterday?” Clara asked.

“Yes.”

“Was it good?”

“Let’s not put pressure on it.”

Arthur tasted it. It was good.

“The beans need a bit longer,” Clara said.

“You’re not at work.”

“I can’t stop knowing about beans just because I’ve taken my coat off.”

Helen used to say things like that. Not exactly those things, but with the same flat refusal to help a ridiculous suggestion along.

Eddie looked at Arthur.

“Sounds like her mother.”

Arthur put down his spoon.

“Yes,” he said.

It was the first thing they had agreed on without competing.