Rosa's Terms

Rosa’s café had three tables in the front, two in the back and a notice on the counter asking people not to put wet umbrellas on the cakes.

Clara had worked there during a summer six years earlier. She had left because she wanted a bigger kitchen, a bigger town and colleagues who didn’t know whether she had eaten breakfast. Rosa had wished her luck and continued to ask the breakfast question whenever she rang.

Now Rosa looked at Arthur and said, “You must be the one who made the rolling pin.”

Arthur blinked.

“I made several.”

“The heavy one. She wouldn’t let anybody else use it.”

Clara set her bag down too firmly.

“It was a good rolling pin.”

“I gathered.”

Rosa had flour on one sleeve and reading glasses hanging from a chain decorated with plastic strawberries. She was neither old enough nor patient enough to play the wise woman Clara had occasionally tried to make her into. She put three mugs on the counter and told them both to sit while she locked up.

The table went in through the back door without its legs. Arthur and Clara carried it. Rosa moved a stack of crates out of their way and complained that whoever had designed the building had apparently not expected objects to enter it.

They set the top on blankets beside the storeroom wall.

“You’ve room upstairs?” Arthur asked.

“For a bed and a person,” Rosa said. “Not always at the same time.”

Clara showed him her room. It had a sloping ceiling, a narrow bed and a window overlooking the backs of other buildings. From one corner, if she leaned, she could see a piece of the harbour.

“It’s small,” she said.

“It’s clean.”

“That’s not the same as nice.”

“No.” He looked around again. “But you can make it nice.”

He did not offer to build shelves immediately. She noticed the effort.

Downstairs, Rosa had brought out the day’s unsold cake. It leaned slightly in the middle.

“Lemon,” she said. “Not a structural triumph.”

Arthur looked at the storeroom door.

“Where am I staying?”

“I booked you into the guesthouse opposite,” Clara said. “Just tonight. Breakfast included.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I know.”

He thanked her. She was absurdly relieved. He was so good at being useful that doing something for him could feel like trying to pay a bill already settled.

Rosa cut the cake.

“Do you still want to say no to my idea?” she asked Clara.

Arthur looked from one woman to the other.

“Rosa offered me evenings here,” Clara said. “Before I found the station. And again after it fell through.”

“Not every evening,” Rosa said. “I like going home. Two a month to start with. You’d do the cooking, bookings, menu, cleaning. We’d put the arrangement in writing so neither of us has to be gracious later.”

Arthur ate his cake. Clara waited for him to ask about the rent. He didn’t.

“I wanted my own place,” she said.

“I know.”

“With my name on it.”

“Yes.”

“It felt like going backwards.”

Rosa brushed crumbs from the knife with her thumb.

“I won’t tell you it doesn’t. You’re allowed to be disappointed. The offer’s still the same.”

Outside, someone tried the locked front door, read the sign, and tried it again.

Rosa ignored them.

Clara looked through the open kitchen door. The range was old but well kept. She knew the awkward corner where two people couldn’t pass each other carrying trays. She knew the good shelf in the cold store, the temperamental tap, the window that stuck when it rained.

It was not the kitchen she had imagined. It was a kitchen in which she knew how to work.

“I’d need to find out my hospital shifts,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And test it. A few evenings. Not announce a whole grand thing.”

“Please don’t announce a grand thing. I have enough notices already.”

Clara smiled. She took out her phone and opened a blank note.

Then she stopped.

“What do you think?” she asked Arthur.

He put his fork down.

“I think I’d like to come and eat.”

She looked at him for a second longer than the sentence required.

“Then you can,” she said.

Later they brought in the legs and assembled the table in the café’s back room. It replaced two folding tables with unsteady hinges. The pale new leg faced the kitchen.

Rosa put a hand on the top and pushed. It didn’t wobble.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” she said, sounding relieved rather than sentimental.

Clara took a photograph for Eddie. Arthur stood at the edge of it, one hand still under the table, checking a fixing that was already tight.

She made him take his hand away.