The painter said the room would look larger in a lighter colour. I had asked him about a patch above the window where the paper was peeling. He had come down from the ladder, stood in the middle of the floor and described a different room.
“You could have it all done while I’m here.”
“I only want the patch.”
He looked at the wall. I saw it as he intended me to: the grey place near the ceiling, the darker square behind the clock, all the years in which we had cleaned the same paper instead of replacing it.
“The patch will show.”
It would. I had learnt from the basin upstairs that a small repair could sometimes leave everything else looking more in need of attention.
He wrote down a price. Two pounds twelve and six, paper and work, with a little extra patching included. I said I would think about it. He put the slip on the mantelpiece, where Joan Hesketh would stand, and went away to finish another job.
Grace found me looking at the wall.
“That doesn’t look promising.”
“He says the patch will show.”
“It will. It’s a patch.”
She touched a loose edge of the paper, then folded her hands behind her back to keep from pulling it. I asked what colour she would choose if she could choose anything.
“For this light? Not yellow.”
I had been thinking of yellow.
She fetched a box from her room and showed me two little scraps of colour she had mixed for a pupil. One was a pale, quiet green, the other warmer, the colour of a pear’s inside. We held them against the wall and moved them from daylight to shadow. I had not looked at colours that way since choosing the ribbon for my wedding hat. Even then I had been chiefly concerned whether Thomas would think it becoming.
“The green,” I said.
“I thought so.”
“You needn’t make it sound as if I had to get it right.”
She laughed. We tried the scraps in the dining room too, which made her laugh again because I was behaving as if buying a little paint would turn the whole house into a new place.
When Nell came back I showed her the estimate. She put her bag down before reading it, a small sign that she was preparing to be careful.
“What did you ask him to do?”
“The patch.”
“Then have the patch.”
“It will show.”
“Yes.”
I took the paper back. “You think I shouldn’t spend anything.”
“I think you should know what can be spent.”
“I do know. There are more names now.”
“Names aren’t coins.”
She had said it before, in other forms, and I was tired of being reminded. There were fifteen people prepared to subscribe, eleven who had paid. Minnie had found another friend; Mrs Tait’s neighbour had brought her money; two women from Mrs Norridge’s shop had said yes by letter. I had counted them into a room which already felt full.
“We ought to make it worth coming to.”
“The woman speaking is worth coming to. You said so.”
“And what should she think when she sees this?” I gestured at the wall. Nell looked up at it, then at the piano, the books, the chairs from our different rooms.
“I don’t know. We could ask.”
I put the estimate in my pocket. I wanted to choose a colour without having to put the desire before a committee of one, even a committee whose caution had kept us solvent for years.
Joan Hesketh came on the following afternoon. I had invited her to see the room before we decided anything further. She walked from the door to the back wall, stood beside the table, and asked me to sit in the furthest chair while she spoke.
“Can you hear this?”
“Yes.”
She lowered her voice. I could still hear. She moved a chair which stood too close to the fireplace, asked whether the doors could remain open during the interval, and said the room would do very well for a small audience.
“How many?”
“Eighteen would be comfortable. More if you take out the big table, but you oughtn’t to make people sit with their knees under someone else’s elbows.”
She did not mention the paper. At last I asked whether she thought a lighter colour would help.
“In the evening? The lamps matter more.”
“I was thinking of a new lamp.”
“Then borrow one first. See how it looks.”
Nell was not there to hear it. I wished, unreasonably, that she had been, so I could feel outnumbered openly instead of in private.
Mrs Hesketh sat at the table. “You will introduce me?”
“If you wish.”
“It is your room. They ought to know who has invited them into it.”
I showed her what I had written. She read it without laughing, crossed out two lines which made her sound more eminent than she was, and put the paper back in front of me.
“Read the rest.”
I did. The words felt thick. I heard myself rushing through my own name and giving too much room to hers.
“Again,” she said. “More slowly. No one is trying to stop you.”
I began a second time. By the end I was looking at her instead of the paper. She nodded and closed her bag.
“That will do. You needn’t make a speech before mine.”
I laughed. She smiled then, and I understood that she had given me a boundary without refusing me a place.
After she left I practised once more, standing by the piano. Mrs Keene heard me from the hall and came to the door.
“Who’s come in?”
“No one.”
She looked at the empty chairs, then at the paper in my hand. “Ah.”
I expected teasing. Instead she asked whether I wanted her to sit down and listen. I did. She took the chair nearest the window, folded her hands and waited.
It was harder to begin with someone I knew so well. I had brought Mrs Keene dinners, washed her cups, argued once about a stain she said I had made on a blouse. She knew which part of the kitchen floor dipped and which expression meant I was about to ask for payment. I could not hide any of that behind the paper.
I said good evening. She answered. We both began laughing, and after that it was easier.
When I finished she said she could hear me from there, but I had let the last words drop.
“You sounded as if you were asking to be excused.”
“I was.”
“Don’t. We’ll have paid for the chair.”
She went back to her sewing. I stood beside the piano, tried the last sentence again and did not let it fall away.
On Saturday I went to look at chairs.
The furniture yard was one Mr Leach knew. He came with me, not because he wished to attend lectures but because he believed that an unaccompanied woman would be sold a chair in worse condition than the one he had broken. I pointed out that his company had not prevented the first chair from breaking. He accepted the rebuke and carried a piece of string for measuring.
We found twelve narrow chairs which matched one another, though not anything in my house. Seven shillings and sixpence each. They had dark backs and plain seats. There were marks on the legs, but all stood evenly when Mr Leach shook them.
“You could hire,” he said.
“I could.”
“Takes less money now.”
“And gives more to someone else later.”
He looked at me. It was a sentence I had brought ready, and it sounded better in the yard than it would beside Nell’s open book.
The man offered to hold them until the following week. I gave him my address, took his written price and walked out with nothing bought. Mr Leach seemed pleased with the restraint. He bought a packet of tobacco on the way home, then remembered that he had promised his sister he would stop.
“She won’t know,” he said.
I laughed and let the remark pass. In my pocket the painter’s estimate had softened at the folds. I took it out when I got home, laid it beside the price of the chairs and looked round the room.
For six weeks people had been telling me it would do as it was. I could see, with a sharpness which made the old paper almost painful, how much I wanted it to be better than that.