In August the heat made the city seem to have been put too close to the fire. We opened windows, shut them against the dust, opened them again because the rooms had become unbearable. Nora Clegg took off her hat in the kitchen and sat down before beginning work. I put a glass of water beside her and sat with her until she was ready to stand.
There were no talks that month. I had promised none. Dora’s circle met twice, at its members’ request, and chose to read with the windows open even if the street occasionally supplied a line of its own. When a man shouted at his horse during a solemn passage, Miss Holt waited for him to finish and said his contribution had settled the question of motive. We laughed, shut the books for ten minutes and drank cold water.
Grace asked to hire the room on several afternoons for drawing lessons. She had pupils who wanted to come together rather than have her travel from one house to the next. Daylight, a table and something to draw; no supper, no speech. We agreed a price she could afford and which did not require me to provide her work for nothing.
The first afternoon they drew a jug. By the last I had begun to recognise which pupil’s work lay nearest the window without reading the names. One made everything too narrow, another put so much shadow into the jug that it seemed full of something darker than water. Grace corrected what she could and let the girls argue about the rest. I came in to collect the cloth afterwards and found one of them carefully erasing a line she had defended for half an hour.
“It’s better,” she said, when she saw me looking.
“I’m glad.”
“I didn’t want it to be.”
She rubbed away the last of it and put her drawing in her folder. Grace was waiting at the door with her own things. She took the girl’s hand for a moment and said they would try something harder next time.
The house earned small sums. They were not all profit; I put aside what belonged to the work, paid the extra cleaning and entered the rest. With the ordinary receipts from rooms we had let, and the evenings already held, there was enough by the end of the month to clear the last one pound eighteen I owed Nell.
I paid it on the afternoon she and Arthur had asked me to see their new rooms.
She counted the money, put it away and wrote the final receipt. We looked at it lying between us. I wanted to make some statement large enough for the whole summer. She had brought her hat and was waiting for me to find mine.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I put the receipt in the cash box. Not her receipt for entrusting the original money; I kept that too. Then I took my hat and went out beside her.
The new house was farther from mine than the first. There was no morning sun in the sitting room. The light came later, Nell explained, after Arthur had gone to work and before she left for the shop. The landlady had agreed that she could receive a small quantity of account work there, provided clients did not begin waiting in the passage. Nell had asked before paying.
The curtains were not yet hung. One window was wider, so she would have to add a strip or choose something else. I had brought a tape measure. When she took it from me she smiled, then gave one end back so we could measure together.
“We can put a plain band down the inside,” she said. “It won’t be the same blue, but it won’t pretend to be.”
Arthur came up from the street carrying the little chair. He had kept it at his parents’ since collecting it in June, and now put it beside the desk, which he and a friend had brought that morning. The curved back stood just below the edge of the window.
Nell sat down.
No one spoke for a moment. She put her hand on the desk, opened the drawer and shut it again.
“It’s a good height,” Arthur said.
“It is.”
I looked at the room behind them. A narrow shelf, a fire which would need attention in winter, a mark near the door which the landlady had promised to have cleaned. There would be things to manage here. I could hear myself beginning to list them and chose instead to ask where they wanted the curtain.
We worked for an hour. When the blue cloth was up the room acquired a little softness. Arthur fetched tea. The landlady lent cups until theirs could be unpacked, and Nell chose one without a chip for me before noticing what she had done and laughing.
“I can manage a chipped cup,” I said.
“I know. I just wanted that one.”
She handed it to me. We drank our tea looking at the window, all three of us tired from work which would be useful whether or not anyone admired it.
As we left Nell touched my sleeve.
“Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for asking me.”
She held my eyes, then turned to help Arthur fold the paper from the cups.
On the first of September I signed for another year at Ashcombe Street.
The rent would be one hundred and eight pounds, paid quarterly. Mr Vale read through the details we had agreed: limited use of the sitting room, the repairs his aunt would arrange, the ordinary responsibilities which were mine. I read them too, without hurrying because he was waiting. We had both made changes to the first proposal. Neither of us described it as a favour.
When I had signed he asked whether I expected to remain beyond the year.
“I don’t know.”
“My aunt will want time to make other arrangements if not.”
“I’ll give her an answer when we agreed.”
He nodded and put his copy in the case beside him.
The changes to the house were less tidy than the agreement. Mr Leach found another room where supper was included. Mrs Keene decided to stay, with use of the kitchen and an arrangement to buy some meals from a neighbour she knew. She had asked about that herself. Grace and Miss Pym remained. I let one empty room to a teacher who worked nearby and another, available after the wedding, to a young woman who liked the idea of being able to come back late without making the whole house wait for her.
I told both exactly what the house offered. They asked questions I had not thought of. One chose it because of the light; the other because the price and route to work suited her. Neither required a story about the woman who kept it in order to decide.
Mr Leach went on the Saturday before the wedding. He had accumulated more things than he supposed and made three journeys to the passage carrying articles he said were hardly worth taking. I waited while he decided about a broken shoehorn. At last he put it in his pocket, apologised for the trouble and looked back into his room.
“I did like it here.”
“I liked having you.”
He turned towards me. I had meant it, and he could hear that I had. He took my hand, shook it, then remembered the lamp I had borrowed and asked whether it had been returned. It had. We both laughed, grateful for a thing we could put right beyond doubt.
After the cart left I went up to the empty room. The bed stood stripped, the curtains open. Mrs Keene came to the door carrying a little vase.
“I thought the new woman might like this.”
“You needn’t give your things away.”
“I’m not. She can have flowers in it while she’s here.”
I took the vase. It was the one she had kept in the cabinet I sold. She put a hand against the doorframe and looked round.
“It will be different without him complaining.”
“We shall have to make our own complaints.”
“I have several ready.”
We went downstairs together. Nora was in the kitchen, and the young woman who would take Nell’s room had called to confirm her arrival date. She asked where letters would be left. I showed her the little shelf above the umbrella stand. The old writing table still stood below it, its drawer catch mended at last by Arthur while he waited for Nell one evening.
“May I put my own paper there?” the new lodger asked.
“On the shelf, yes. I’ll be moving the table.”
“Where to?”
“Upstairs. To my room.”
She nodded, already more interested in her post than in my furniture. I looked at the narrow table, the place where Bessie had written her receipt the night she arrived, and measured it against the window I had in mind.
Then I went down to the kitchen. There were two women waiting to tell me their complaints, and I had time to hear them before beginning my own work.