The Empty Van

Arthur left after breakfast on Friday.

He had slept badly in the guesthouse and told Clara he’d slept well because he didn’t want his journey to become another thing she thought she had done wrong. Then, while she was buttering toast, he corrected himself.

“Actually, there was a pipe making a noise. And the pillow was peculiar.”

“What was peculiar about it?”

“It appeared to be full of smaller pillows.”

She nodded with professional seriousness.

“That is peculiar.”

They were sitting at the table. Their table, although Arthur was trying to stop calling it that. Morning light came through the café’s back window and made the repaired leg look almost white.

Clara had brought down a notebook. Not a business plan. Just a list of things she would need to ask Rosa, and some menu ideas with arrows between them.

Arthur read it when she offered it to him.

“Sounds good,” he said.

“Which bit?”

“The onion tart. And the chicken. Not sure about this.”

“That’s not food. It says spare aprons.”

“Oh.”

She took the notebook back, smiling.

He helped Rosa move a sack of flour, carried his bag across from the guesthouse and checked the empty van. Without the table it smelled more strongly of rubber mats and whoever had hired it before them.

Clara stood by the passenger door.

“Text when you’re back,” she said.

“I will.”

“And send me a picture of the flat.”

“It isn’t much.”

“I didn’t ask for an estate agent’s photograph. Just so I can see where you are.”

He nodded.

She hugged him. He had expected the quick embrace they had used at Christmas, one hand on the shoulder, both of them already preparing to move apart. Instead she held on until he stopped patting her back.

“Thank you for bringing it,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“And coming.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

The van rattled more without its load. He noticed it on the first stretch out of town and pulled over to check the straps, then found himself standing at the open back doors looking into a space he had deliberately emptied.

He put the loose straps in a bag. That was all that needed doing.

At the service station where they had eaten on Wednesday, he bought tea and a cheese sandwich. He took a photograph of the sandwich and sent it to Clara with the message: Still suitable?

Her reply came while he was sitting down.

For someone your age, yes.

He laughed. The woman at the next table glanced up, then back to her paper.

He returned the van that afternoon. Eddie rang while he was walking home from the hire depot.

“Looks good in the photograph,” Eddie said.

“It does.”

“That ash will darken a bit.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do.”

They walked around several harmless subjects before Eddie said, “She told me you know about the station.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry. I didn’t want to be the one to say.”

“That was fair enough.”

A bus went past, covering whatever Eddie said next. Arthur asked him to repeat it.

“I said she’s allowed to tell us different things.”

Arthur stood at a crossing, waiting for the light.

“Yes,” he said. “Apparently.”

Neither was entirely comfortable with this. It seemed a reasonable place to begin.

The following week Arthur moved into the flat above the phone shop. The bedroom took the bed and not much else. The living-room window looked onto a row of chimneys and the upper branches of a tree in someone else’s garden.

He unpacked the badger mug. He put Helen’s photograph on a shelf, moved it to another shelf, then left it on the first one. For supper he bought soup and ate it at a small folding table left by the previous tenant.

Clara rang at eight.

“Have you got a curtain?”

“Yes.”

“One?”

“There are two. It’s an ordinary flat, Clara.”

“I’m establishing the facts.”

She had got the hospital job. She sounded pleased and defensive about sounding pleased. He let her tell him about the hours, the woman who interviewed her, the kitchen large enough to lose a trolley in.

“I like knowing when money’s coming,” she said at last.

“I remember liking that.”

“I thought you’d think I’d given up.”

“No.”

She was quiet.

“The evenings are still happening,” she added.

“I’ll come.”

“I know.”

After they hung up, Arthur washed the bowl. He noticed that the cupboard door above the sink hung slightly low and took a screwdriver from the box by his feet.

Then he put it back. He would mend it tomorrow.

For that evening, he opened the window and listened to someone practising a trumpet badly three streets away.