Moving On

Dinner

Dinner

AFTERWARDS, LONG AFTERWARDS, SHE THOUGHT, That was where it began. That Monday night was where we started .

‘Come with me,’ Ben said, appearing in the staffroom at closing time, a rolled-up chart under his arm. ‘The table in the flat is bigger.’ He led the way up a narrow steep staircase to the building’s top floor and opened a door.

‘My kingdom,’ he said, and she entered a slope-ceilinged, white-walled room that held a trestle table and two chairs, a fridge and a glass-fronted press. A hotplate with two rings sat on the table, a kettle and a small saucepan perched on top. In the press she saw a cereal box, stacked cans, a tea caddy, a bowl of oranges, a bag of sugar.

And also in the room were books, lots of books. Piled on top of the press, stacked on one of the chairs. Towers of books, some climbing almost to waist height, were lined up by the far wall.

He unplugged the hotplate and transferred it to the top of the fridge. ‘I have a bedroom and a bathroom too, and a laughably small sitting room that I ignore.’

He unrolled the chart and spread it on the table. He took markers and pencils from his pockets and pushed up his shirtsleeves, even though the room felt a little chilly to Ellen.

She produced the wording she’d written out. ‘Does this sound OK?’

He scanned it. ‘Fine. What’s the free surprise?’

She explained her goody-bag idea.

‘Great. I’ll leave you to organise that. Take money from the kitty.’

‘OK – and I thought I’d write a letter from Santa and bring it in to read to them.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘And maybe we could offer a discount on the book I’ve chosen, just for that day? I could announce it at the end.’

‘Go on, why not? I’ll order in a few extra copies – remind me tomorrow. So how do we do this?’

‘We’ll need a ruler,’ she said, ‘and a rubber.’ He thumped down the stairs and got them from his office, and she ruled faint pencil guidelines on the chart. They stood side by side looking down at it.

‘You go first,’ he said. ‘You do the heading.’

She took a marker and held it poised. ‘I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.’

‘I’ll start so’ – but his spacing was off, and he ran out of paper halfway through Books . He made another trip to his office and came back with a fresh chart.

‘You go this time,’ he said, and she added more guidelines to contain each word, but when she’d finished it looked too cramped.

‘We should drop the heading,’ she said, ‘and just go with Christmas Storytime ,’ so he found a third chart.

‘Let’s write it in pencil first,’ she suggested, ‘to be on the safe side,’ and after much rubbing out it was all set down and correctly spaced.

‘You go over it in marker,’ he said.

‘Why me?’

‘Because of the two of us, you’re slightly less terrible.’

‘That doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence.’

‘Go on, you’ll be grand’ – so she worked cautiously with the marker and got to the end, and stepped back to check it.

‘Oh no,’ she said.

A dark smudge in the lower corner. She checked her hand and saw the marker stain on the side of it. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and went to wash her hands in his bathroom while he got another chart.

By the time the poster was finally completed, an hour had gone by. ‘I’m in need of a lie-down,’ he said, rolling up the rejected sheets. ‘Talk about trauma.’

‘No lying down before you get me the bag of chips I was promised. I told my aunt not to include me for dinner.’

‘Ah yes, the chips. Right, I’ll dispose of these and meet you at the front door.’

He didn’t get her a bag of chips. He brought her to a little restaurant on the next street and she ordered chicken and he ordered fish, and as they ate, he told her he’d done two years in college before dropping out.

‘What were you studying?’

‘Science. Bad choice, wasn’t for me. I’d like to go back some fine day and do what I should have done.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t laugh. I play a bit of piano, so I’d like to see what a music degree might feel like.’

‘That sounds great – but why wait? Why not go now, when you’re young?’

He shrugged. ‘Things to do, promises to keep – and I’d rather not ask my folks to fund it, after I wasted two years of fees. It’ll happen eventually, though, when the time is right, and I can pay for it myself.’

She told him about Joan studying to be a teacher.

‘You never considered college yourself?’

She hesitated. How much should she tell him? ‘I thought about it in school, but . . . well, our circumstances changed.’

‘Sorry,’ he said immediately. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’

But suddenly she found she wanted to. ‘I don’t mind. My father walked out when I was sixteen, and after that, well, I . . . lost interest in college and got a job instead.’

‘Tough,’ he said, and she saw the sympathy in his face.

‘But I’m happy now, so it’s fine.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ He topped up their wine glasses, and she was glad too that he hadn’t made a big thing of it.

Towards the end of their meal a woman at a nearby table gave a sudden little cry, and they turned to see her companion on one knee by her chair. They watched as he took a small box from his pocket, and they saw her put hands to her face as he opened the box, and they watched her eyes fill with tears as she nodded wordlessly, and they clapped along with the other onlookers as he placed the ring on her finger and kissed her to seal the deal.

And Ellen saw that they were oblivious to the rest of the room, and she thought, yes, yes, this, and felt her own tears threaten, and blinked them away. She turned back to see Ben watching her and was embarrassed. ‘I’m a softie,’ she said, laughing.

He smiled. ‘You’re a romantic. Nothing wrong with that.’

They finished their main courses. When she turned down an offer of dessert he called for the bill. ‘So,’ he said, ‘where will Ellen Sheehan be in ten years? Any dreams you want to fulfil, like me and the piano?’

To be married , she thought. To be married and in love and happy . She searched for something that sounded a little more practical. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind trying to write a book sometime.’ She waited for him to laugh.

He didn’t. ‘Fiction?’

‘Yes, definitely fiction. I enjoyed creative writing in school.’

‘So what’s stopping you?’

‘I suppose I’m nervous. What if I try and fail?’

He propped elbows on the table. ‘What if you try and don’t fail? What if Ellen Sheehan was born to write?’

She laughed. ‘I suppose the idea terrifies me. It can’t be easy, writing an entire book.’

‘Probably not – but if you really want something, it’s worth a try. And look at all the people who tried and didn’t fail.’

‘True.’

He tipped his head to the side and gave her that considering, narrow-eyed look she had come to know. ‘I think we should make a pact, you and me. You have a go at a novel, and I’ll give a music degree my best shot. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

‘Shake,’ he said, and she shook, hoping nobody was watching.

He held on to her hand. ‘Any questions?’

‘Are we putting a time limit on it?’

‘Let’s just say when the time is right. Promise me you’ll try.’

‘I promise.’

Afterwards, he put her into a taxi. ‘I can walk,’ she said.

‘No you can’t, it’s too dark.’ He paid the driver, again ignoring her protestations. ‘See you in the morning, half nine sharp.’

He’d forgotten he’d said she could come in later. She didn’t mention it. Probably would have gone in at her usual time anyway – and he had paid for dinner, and her taxi home.

After that, she was aware of a shift in her awareness of him. She took to studying him when he wasn’t looking. She memorised all the features of his face – the splotch of black in the iris of his left eye, the pupil bleeding into the hazel. The eyelashes a shade darker than the sandy hair on his head. The front tooth that projected slightly in front of the other. The two small pale freckles on his nose, another beneath his right ear.

She recreated them in her head, conjuring up his face as she lay in bed each night. She fell asleep to the remembered sound of his voice.

He appeared in the children’s section just before the start of the Christmas storytime. He gave a short welcome speech and handed over to Ellen before disappearing – and halfway through, something made her look beyond her audience, and she saw that he’d returned and was propped against the wall, a half-smile on his face as he watched. Their eyes met for an instant, and his smile broadened into a grin, and she had to pull her attention back to the story and try to forget he was there.

Yes, that was where it began. The night of the poster.