Two Portions

Arthur walked down to the harbour and bought chips because it was nearly four and nobody had eaten lunch.

Only after the woman had wrapped them did he realise he had ordered two portions. He stood outside the shop holding the warm paper and felt, for the first time that afternoon, slightly ridiculous.

He had come a long way to be angry at someone who had lost something she wanted. He was aware of that. He was also aware that she had made him a spectator at a play everyone else knew had been cancelled.

Both things seemed possible. He was not sure how to put them in the same sentence.

He sent a message: At the harbour. Bought food. Coming back.

Clara replied almost immediately. I’ll come down.

He found a bench with a view of three fishing boats and an overturned bucket. It was less picturesque than the postcards in the shop window. He preferred it.

A gull landed beside him and inspected the packets.

“No,” he said.

The gull remained optimistic.

Clara came down the hill carrying her red coat rather than wearing it. Her face was blotchy. He looked at the boats until she sat down.

“Salt?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Vinegar?”

“Yes.”

“Good. They’ve already put it on.”

They ate. The gull came closer. Clara moved her foot and it retreated a small, insulting distance.

“I should have told you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I know you don’t have to make that easier, but you could leave half a second.”

He almost smiled.

“I didn’t expect you to fail,” he said.

She looked into the paper.

“I expected there to be problems. It’s a business. There are always problems. The figures were the bit I knew how to help with.”

“I needed you to like the idea first.”

“I did like it.”

“You didn’t say.”

He watched a man carry a coil of rope along the quay.

“No.”

Clara ate another chip. When she spoke again, it was more quietly.

“You kept saying it would be hard work. I’ve been working in kitchens since I was sixteen. I know what hard work is.”

“I know you do.”

“And Mum always made it sound like you thought more of what I did than you actually said.”

Arthur set his food down.

“She wasn’t making it up.”

“I know that now. I think. I just can’t keep guessing.”

The harbour smelled of diesel and wet rope. A little swell lifted one boat against its fenders with a soft squeak.

“I don’t know how to do this without her,” Arthur said.

Clara stopped eating.

He kept his eyes on the boat.

“Any of it. The house. You. I was her husband for twenty years. I knew what that involved, more or less. Then she wasn’t there, and I didn’t know which bits of my life still belonged to me.”

“You think I was one of the bits?”

“Not like an object. I mean I didn’t know whether you still wanted—”

He stopped. This was why he preferred bolts. You could apply force to them without producing a sentence you hadn’t intended.

“Whether I wanted you?” she asked.

He nodded.

She put her chips between them.

“Arthur. At the funeral I sat in the second row.”

“I know.”

“Your brother had the seats at the front. And his children. I stood there and nobody moved, and you looked at me and pointed to the row behind. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. But she was my mum.”

He remembered the packed room. The order of service slipping from his hand. Looking for somewhere she could sit, grateful there was a place.

“I thought I was helping,” he said.

“I know.”

“God.”

“And afterwards everyone asked how you were. Which was right. Of course it was right. But I felt as though I’d become a person visiting your grief.”

Arthur put a hand on the bench between them. He did not touch her yet.

“I should have moved them.”

“Yes.”

“I should have had you beside me.”

“Yes.”

He sat with the answer. There was nothing useful to do to it.

Clara pulled her coat over her knees.

“I stopped answering because I didn’t know how to say any of that without making you feel worse. Then you’d leave a message about the washing machine or whether I’d changed my address, and I’d get angry because I thought that was all you had to say.”

“I was finding reasons to ring.”

“I know that now too.”

He moved his hand a little closer. She rested two fingers on the back of it, the way Helen used to do when she wanted his attention without interrupting someone else.

“I didn’t come because the table needed levelling,” he said.

“I had worked that out.”

“I wanted to go somewhere with you.”

She kept her fingers where they were.

“Even if I haven’t got a restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Even if I get a job making custard for three hundred people?”

“That’s quite a lot of custard.”

“It is.”

“Your mother would have approved. Better than putting it on the walls.”

Clara laughed, unexpectedly and loudly enough to offend the gull.

They finished the chips. They were cold by then, but neither suggested throwing them away.