Nell and Arthur told me about September on a Saturday morning while I was shelling peas. I put the bowl down when I saw them standing together in the kitchen doorway.
“We’ve written to ask about the twenty-third,” Nell said. “We won’t marry next week.”
I had imagined the words for five days. They still arrived as if I had never been warned.
“Because of the rooms?”
“Because we don’t want to begin in someone else’s spare room,” Arthur said. “Or have Mother buy the furniture and wonder every time she visits why we haven’t put it where she would.”
Nell glanced at him. He managed a small smile.
“She’s already offered,” he added.
I looked at the peas in the bowl. “I could speak to her.”
“We’ve spoken to her,” Nell said.
She drew out a chair and sat down. Arthur took the other. There were four chairs round the kitchen table, and we did not need any of the new ones upstairs to have this conversation.
“I know you want to help now,” she said. “But I need to finish a sentence without finding you at the other end of it.”
I closed my mouth. She waited until I looked at her.
“We’re giving up those rooms. We may find something else. We may go back if they’re still there. We’ve both put some money away since the beginning of May, and we’ll put away more. The dress will keep. So will the cake.”
“Your mother worked so hard on it,” I said to Arthur.
“She says we’ll have to feed it all summer.”
He smiled again, and this time the smile stayed. His mother had found a task which allowed her to be useful without requiring the marriage to happen on her terms. I wished I had learnt the trick before spending Nell’s money.
“I am so sorry,” I said.
Nell looked at me, then down at the little bag she had brought. “I know you are.”
There was no warmth in the answer, but no demand that I prove it in another speech. We had reached the place where sorrow, however sincere, could not perform the work still needed.
Arthur asked whether he might collect the chair. Not to take it away, only to put it in the empty back room where it would not be used by visitors. I said of course. He went upstairs, and for a moment Nell and I were alone.
“Did you quarrel?” I asked.
She looked up. “About postponing?”
“Yes.”
“A little.”
I wanted to know which of them had wanted what. The question would have put me between them again, seeking a place in the damage I had caused.
“I hope you found what you both wanted.”
“We found what we could both choose. It isn’t quite the same.”
She picked up a peapod, broke it open and let the peas fall into the bowl. I reached for another. We worked until Arthur came down, and I did not ask her to stay after he had returned.
Ada arrived at three. She had heard from Nell by letter, not from me, and I was glad my daughter had told her in her own words. The cake tin stood on the sideboard when we went into the dining room. My sister looked at it, then away.
“I have spoken to William.”
I sat down. “You needn’t have.”
“I know. I did.”
She set her bag on the chair beside her. Her face held none of the satisfaction I had expected from someone coming to discuss my mistake. She looked tired and fiercely determined not to waste the effort she had made in coming.
“He will let me have ten pounds. I can lend it to you.”
“Ada—”
“Listen first.”
I had used the same tone often enough to recognise the fear beneath it. She opened her bag and took out a page in her own hand.
“The committee needs a place from September. A regular one. If we knew we could use this room without a fresh argument every time, we could plan properly. You wouldn’t need these little readings and all the different arrangements. We could fill the evenings for you.”
“Which evenings?”
“Two a week to begin with. There might be more. I would arrange the speakers and decide what meetings were appropriate. We should have a clear understanding about charges until the loan had been accounted for.”
I took the paper. It was not a wicked scheme. My sister wanted to solve her own difficulty and mine together, as I had so often solved other people’s difficulties by fitting them into the shape of what I wished. There were figures, possible dates, a line about Bessie assisting when required.
“Has Bessie agreed to this?”
Ada took the page back. “I would pay her.”
“But has she agreed?”
“I am asking you first.”
I looked at the green wall. There were women who had paid to come here without joining Ada’s work, a circle which chose its own books, lodgers who would have to live above whatever we made of the house. Two evenings might be possible. They would be possible as room hire, not as the delivery of a household into another woman’s management.
“I could let you dates on the same terms as anyone else,” I said. “I can’t promise the room whenever you require it. Or Bessie.”
“Then how am I to know the money will come back?”
It was a fair question. She had asked for control because I had given everyone a reason not to trust my judgement.
“I don’t know yet.”
She pressed her lips together. “You could make an effort to be helped.”
“I am trying to understand what you’re offering.”
“A way out.”
I put my hands flat on the table. “And if I can’t do it your way, is there another?”
She looked at the paper. “It is William’s money. He wants to know what he is paying for.”
For a moment I saw the journey the ten pounds would make: from William to Ada, from Ada to me, then through rooms and people’s time until it became something William could recognise as properly repaid. Nell would get her cash. Another set of promises would begin, some of them about people who had not been asked.
“I must speak to Nell,” I said.
Ada looked up. “You didn’t before.”
“No.”
The word stopped her. She folded the page and put it back in her bag. We had tea, not because the conversation was finished comfortably but because neither of us knew how to leave it. She told me William’s cousin had been ill after all; the Saturday she had asked me to accompany her, she went alone and came home glad she had not missed it. I was sorry then, in a smaller and more particular way, that I had not gone.
When Nell returned I told her the offer. She listened without interrupting.
“Would it be a loan to you, or to me?”
“To me.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because it could get your money back now.”
She thought for a moment. “If you can repay it, take it. If you can’t, don’t make a promise about someone else’s work to cover what happened to mine.”
“I could sell something instead.”
“Then find out what it would bring. Don’t say it because it sounds like a punishment.”
I looked at her. The anger in her face had begun to change. It was not less, exactly, but more tired. She had lost money and a room, and now she was being asked to inspect the quality of every thought I offered in repayment.
“You shouldn’t have to advise me about this,” I said.
“No.”
She went upstairs. I wrote to Mrs Norridge asking for the name of the dealer she had mentioned. Then I wrote to Ada, thanking her for the effort she had made and saying I could not give the room on the terms offered. I would send particulars if she wished to hire it in the ordinary way.
I posted the letters before the last collection, then stood a moment beside the box with the ten-pound offer still in my pocket.
Before bed I went into the sitting room and looked at the things we owned. Not at what they meant, not yet. At what they were, how they could be moved, who might want them. The piano stood by the wall, its lid closed. I put a hand on it, lifted the lid and played one of the notes which had always been wrong.
The sound went on longer than I expected in the empty room. Upstairs someone closed a door. I let the note finish before putting the lid down.