The Serious Contenders

Fenna wanted a team name first. No question had been asked yet, Madelon still had her coat on and Aydin was looking at the drinks list, but Fenna already held the pen. Marten found it extraordinarily pleasant to be able to predict this without finding it annoying.

'The Serious Contenders,' he said.

She looked up. 'That's not bad.'

'You sound surprised.'

'I want to motivate you.'

Madelon took off her coat and sat down. 'Write it down. Otherwise we'll be at the last round before we've found one everybody can identify with.'

The pub had a low platform where the quizmaster stood at a microphone. Decorations hung that had probably been there for something else. At the tables round them people sat with the same mixture of good spirits and blank answer sheets. Marten saw a man he knew from a race meeting and decided not to get up at once. He liked being here with these three, Fenna beside him, her knee against his.

Aydin brought the drinks. Madelon tapped her glass against Fenna's and said she hoped the whole Danish plan worked out. She said it simply, not as an announcement to the entire pub. Fenna smiled and said that since Tuesday it had occurred to her several times at an awkward moment. In the middle of asking whether there were twenty valve caps left in stock, for instance.

'You'll have to count those in a new language,' Aydin said.

'I can just about introduce myself. I'd have to ask for help with the caps.'

'A good start.'

Marten rested a hand briefly on her thigh. She looked at him, still with that happy expression. She no longer needed to explain why this was important. He had heard her on Wednesday, felt her dancing as if standing still was no longer the idea for now. He was pleased for her. It had begun that simply and still felt that way when she looked at him.

The first question concerned a city. Fenna wrote before the quizmaster had finished speaking. Madelon asked if she would wait for the rest of the question. Fenna covered the answer with her hand and said she was of course willing to change her mind.

'If there's a reason,' she added.

None came. The answer was right. She looked so pleased that Marten put his arm round the back of her chair. It wasn't a pose he had prepared. He wanted to sit close and she leaned towards him, as if completing the gesture herself.

During the music round Aydin proved to know more than the rest of them together. From a short clip he immediately recognised the instrument playing the tune. Fenna thought it was something else. Aydin put one finger on the paper.

'I know something about this.'

'I was only saying what I thought.'

'You won't even let me finish an answer.'

He used to play the clarinet, he said. For a few years, seriously enough still to know when somebody mistook another instrument for it. Madelon looked at him as though he had said he owned a second house. She asked why he had never told them.

'Because you usually ask why something doesn't work. That rarely has anything to do with my clarinet.'

Marten laughed and felt Fenna move beside him. They kept the answer about the instrument. When it proved correct, she drew an elegant circle round it and pushed the pen towards Aydin. He didn't take it. Apparently her having to admit he was right was enough.

Marten was sure he knew the answer to one of the film questions, and it wasn't the title the others gave. He defended his choice at length, with a scene only he remembered. Halfway through Fenna asked if he wasn't telling them two films at once.

'It would make an excellent film,' he said.

'We're looking for this film.'

They kept his answer. It was wrong. Marten looked at the screen and then the table. Madelon slid the paper a little further from him. Nobody spoke. It was so obviously deliberate he had to laugh before they did.

'The story has improved over the years,' Fenna said softly.

He looked sideways. She now knew him well enough to use a sentence from the evening they had cooked together against him again. He wanted to kiss her. Instead he took her hand under the table and felt her thumb stroke his fingers. He could lose one film question if she kept doing that for a while.

In the interval he went to the bar with Aydin. His friend asked how things stood with Koen. He had heard about the job offer, though Marten wasn't quite sure from whom. In this circle an ordinary appointment could travel faster than the results they had waited for together all day.

'I like it more than I expected,' Marten said.

'That sounds awkward.'

'Very.'

Aydin ordered, turned to him and asked what was awkward about it. Not challengingly. He asked as though he wanted to understand the logic before putting it away in his head. Marten looked at the table, where Fenna and Madelon were bent over something. Both were talking. Afterwards they would probably say they had listened to each other very well.

'I still know how I want to race,' he said. 'I don't know if that's enough to keep sorting out everything else.'

Aydin nodded and said he still missed part of his own work since he had started working more for himself. He hadn't stopped that before building something else either. Then the drinks were ready and they had to return to the table.

Fenna looked up as Marten sat down. 'I've given you credit for something,' she said.

'Already?'

'An answer. You just don't know it yet.'

He looked. It was indeed something he knew. She beamed so brightly at his approving face it was almost hard not to laugh. He stroked her back and let his hand linger at the edge of her jumper. She stopped explaining the answer to Madelon and looked briefly at him.

The final rounds went less well. A picture Fenna thought could resemble nothing else turned out, according to the answers, to resemble something quite different. Madelon lost an argument in a way that first offended her, then made her laugh so hard the quizmaster had to wait. They finished in the middle. Not last, entitled to nothing. Aydin thought it an excellent outcome for a team with this name.

As they said goodbye, Fenna asked if she could join them again next time. Madelon said she first needed three working days to assess the collaboration. Fenna kissed her cheek. Aydin had an early start tomorrow and went outside ahead of them. They talked briefly about next week's race meeting in Apeldoorn. Their names would be on separate lists again then, and Aydin would be working while they rode.

Marten walked with Fenna to their cars. They had each driven and hers was near his. It was cold, but not so cold they got straight in. She asked if he wanted to walk. He did. They went a few streets with no destination, far enough from the pub to lose the sound of the other customers.

She told him about a message from Naja. An addition to the outline, an answer to one of her questions. She had it on her phone and asked if he wanted to see. He read it beneath a streetlamp. The first week of February was mentioned so matter-of-factly among the other sentences that he only lingered over it on a second reading.

'Right after January,' he said.

She looked at him and laughed. 'That's the usual order.'

'Yes. I heard myself say it.'

'It still feels close and far away at the same time.'

He gave back her phone. Only a few weeks after Christmas. The Christmas he hadn't even arranged with his sister yet. A whole stretch of winter lay ahead, and at the same time her possible departure now had a place among all the ordinary arrangements. He had changed nothing in his calendar. Yet suddenly he saw the Saturday afternoons when she couldn't come and the evenings when he couldn't simply drive to hers.

Fenna slipped her hand into his. They walked on. He listened as she talked about the group, the room she hadn't yet got a definite photograph of, how hard she found it not to start organising things already. He could picture her there. He wanted to picture himself there too without immediately becoming the man who asked about coming back at the beginning of a train journey.

'You could visit,' she said.

'I know.'

'Not every weekend. That's not what I mean.'

'No.'

They stopped. A cyclist passed, steering across at the last moment to avoid a puddle. Fenna watched him go, then looked at Marten again.

'What is it?' she asked.

He took a breath. It would have been easier to explain it as a problem with travel, money or the days he would work at Koen's. Those were real things. He would only be using them to avoid saying what he found hardest.

'I've spent so much time away while the rest of my life carried on here,' he said. 'I'd send photos and ask how things were. I'd count the days till I got back. I don't want that again, waiting all the time.'

Fenna looked at their hands. He didn't want to let go of hers, and for a moment couldn't tell whether that made honesty easier or harder.

'Don't you want me to go?'

He didn't answer at once. She stayed and waited without helping him with a kind explanation. He had liked her because she didn't invent a softer version of every sharp question. Now he found how easy it was to enjoy that only as long as he had a good answer.

'Part of me wants you to stay,' he said.

She looked up. He saw it in her face before she spoke: she wouldn't play down the Danish offer to make that happen. She wanted to go. He knew. He had heard her say so, watched her turn round his own living room with pleasure because it was becoming possible.

'I do want to go,' she said. 'If it happens.'

'Yes.'

'Even now.'

He nodded. There was no talking his way round that sentence. She wanted to keep seeing him and she wanted to go there. He had enjoyed hearing both when they existed separately. Now they stood side by side, and he still had to discover what he could really offer.

They walked back without needing the cold to end the conversation for them. He didn't ask if she could perhaps put off deciding. She didn't ask if he could come with her. He said that some days he very much wanted to start at Koen's, and on others was still angry that he wanted to. She said she understood. He didn't know whether she understood entirely, but she didn't try to solve it.

Beside the cars she stayed turned towards him. 'I still want to kiss you,' she said.

'That's good news.'

'Just saying.'

He came closer and she rested her hands against his chest. She kissed him slowly, without suddenly needing an answer to emerge between them. He held her. It was cold round the neck of his coat and warm where she stood against him.

'Will you come home with me?' he asked.

'Yes.'

They drove separately to his flat. He got there a little earlier and opened the door as soon as she came up the stairs. She took off her coat and stood in the hall for a moment. He didn't wait for a joke. He took her hand and led her into the living room.

They sat beside each other for a long while. They talked about the quiz, about the film he didn't know and had defended far too well. She let him talk and only interrupted once he deliberately invented something extra. His arm was round her and he felt her laugh.

Later in bed he felt her foot against his ankle. She asked if he would turn out the light. He did, then lay on his back for a while. They lay so close he could touch her without asking her to come nearer. He stroked her arm with his fingers and she moved towards him.

They didn't fall asleep at once. They kissed, held each other and talked quietly until the sentences grew shorter. They reached no decision about February. She did ask if he would still like to see her next week after her races. He said he would love to see her.

When she finally slept, Marten lay awake a little longer. He heard a car stop below and a door close somewhere. Fenna breathed quietly. His arm was round her and he felt her move a little with each breath. She was here, on this Saturday night in his bed, and he held her until he grew sleepy too. Tomorrow he could ask what time she wanted coffee.