Witness to
My Real Life

By the time the waiter brought the bill, Adrian had paid for the evening three times in his head. In one version he sold the watch. In another he returned the coat. While his friends debated a bottle of wine, he was working out how long the lights could stay on at home.

The folder landed by his elbow. He opened it, found a pencil tucked into the spine and drew five short lines down the margin. “I can cover mine,” he said. The friend on his left pulled the bill closer. She had forgotten her glasses. They bent over the tiny print together until six oysters and a lemonade had found their owners.

For six months I kept your chair facing mine. I made you remarkably good at apologising. By the time the kettle boiled you always came round to my point of view. One wet evening my upstairs neighbour knocked. She wanted to borrow a chair for her boy's birthday supper. I nearly said the seat was taken.

Through the ceiling I heard it scrape, then a thump, then a boy insisting that he was quite all right. In the morning the chair came back with a paper star stuck underneath. I left the star where it was and put the chair by the window. When I rang you, you asked if it was a bad time. I had never once thought up that opening.

Nobody had called him Pip since the summer they carried milk upstairs before school. At conferences he introduced himself with both initials. Now Leo was saying “Pip” across a café table, pushing out a chair with his foot. Rain had worked its way down the back of his collar. He was glad of an excuse to look at the floor.

“Tell me about the crates,” Leo said. Pip began with the day he had carried three at once. Leo made that small sound in his throat. “Two,” Pip said. “You took the third because my wrist was bad.” Leo nodded. The chair scraped closer. For the price of a cup of tea he had recovered a whole summer, and a wrist that used to hurt when it rained.

When he finished telling her, the only sound in the room was the electric kettle overfilling its base with steam. He wanted to go and switch it off. He wanted a job involving a cloth and both hands. Instead he let his fingers uncurl from his cuff and waited.

She got up. In the kitchen a spoon struck the side of a cup, once, then twice. She came back with one cup for herself and the sugar bowl, which she had picked up by mistake. “I'll need a while,” she said. He moved the papers to make space for the bowl. Neither of them tried to guess how long a while might be.

In his coat pocket the old music box could play one whole tune if you turned the handle steadily enough. He played it at the table. Somebody asked about his journey home. For a moment he could see the ship he usually invented, every sail up against a sky the colour of tea. He put the box down. “Walked. The bus had gone.”

After supper he took out his guitar. Under his fingers the ship got all its sails back, and the girl at the far end of the table supplied a gull with a folded napkin. This time everybody knew where the sea was. When the last chord died they could hear the rain again. He put on his coat and asked if anyone was walking his way.