The eggs were right.
She had not told him how she liked her eggs. She had not told anyone how she liked her eggs for years, because no one had asked. Daniel had not asked. The man at the job interview had not asked. Her mother had never asked, because her mother had made the eggs the way she made them, and Maeve had eaten them, and the question of preference had not arisen. Alastair had made the eggs the way her mother had made them, and she had not expected them to be that way, and they had been that way, and she had eaten them without speaking, and he had eaten his without speaking, and the kitchen had been quiet except for the sound of their forks, and she had thought, he has been here longer than I have, and he knows what I cannot know.
She did not ask him how he knew. She thought about asking. She thought: if I ask him, he will have to lie, or he will have to say something true that I am not yet ready to hear. She left it. She ate her eggs.
He cleared the plates. She offered to clear them. He said: you cooked dinner last night. She had cooked dinner last night. She had cooked the thing her mother used to make on Sundays. She had not known how she had known to cook it. She had known. He had let her cook it. He had eaten it across from her. She had not, at the time, thought about what he had eaten.
She said: what did you eat last night.
He said: the same thing.
She said: you ate the same thing.
He said: I made myself the same thing after you had gone to bed. It seemed unkind to eat anything else.
She did not know what to do with that. She said: I am not sure it is kind to eat the same thing.
He said: no. But I did not want you to come down in the morning and find a plate in the sink that was not yours.
She thought about that. She thought: he has thought about this. He has thought about how I would feel in the morning.
She did not say: you do not have to take care of me. She did not say: I am not your responsibility. She said, instead: all right.
After breakfast they played cards. There was a pack of cards in the drawer of the small desk in the office-room, and a small book of games, and a notebook in which someone — she did not know who — had recorded scores in a hand she did not recognise. The notebook had been used for a long time. Some of the scores were old and faded. Some were fresh.
Alastair said: I will teach you a game.
She said: I do not want to learn a new game.
He said: it is a game you already know.
He taught her a game. It was, in fact, a game she already knew — a patience game, the kind you play alone, but he had adapted it so that two could play. She won the first hand. He won the second. They played a third, and she was about to win, and he looked at her cards, and he looked at his cards, and he moved one card from one place to another, and she said: you cheated.
He said: I did.
She said: why did you cheat.
He said: because if I had not cheated, you would have won, and I did not want you to win too quickly. Winning too quickly takes the game out of the game.
She said: you cheated so I would not win.
He said: yes.
She said: that is a strange reason to cheat.
He said: I have not had a great deal of practice at reasons.
She looked at him across the cards. He was not smiling. He was looking at her with the expression he sometimes wore, which was the expression of a man who had said something that surprised him as he said it. She thought: he is learning himself as he is speaking. She thought: he does not have a self that is finished.
She laughed. She did not know why she laughed. She laughed again. She had not laughed in four years. She had laughed with Daniel, at the start, when they were first together, but she had not laughed like this — without a thought behind it, without the sound being caught in her throat. She put her hand over her mouth. She laughed, and she put her hand over her mouth, and she thought: I am laughing in a kitchen with a man I have known for two days, in a place I cannot explain, and the man has just cheated at cards to keep me in the game, and I am laughing.
He watched her. He did not laugh with her. He watched her, and his face did something she could not name, and she thought: he has not seen anyone laugh in a long time. She thought: he has not seen anyone laugh.
She stopped laughing. She wiped her eyes. She said: deal again.
He dealt again. He did not cheat. She won. She won the next hand as well. She won the third. He said, when she had won the third: you have learned the game.
She said: I had already learned it.
He said: yes. But you have learned it again.
In the afternoon they walked. They walked along the path between the two low stone walls, and out past the gate, and along the beach, and past the rock where they had sat the day before, and further along, where the beach narrowed and the sand was darker. The wind came up briefly, and her hair blew across her face, and he put out his hand as if to brush it back, and then he stopped, and he put his hand back at his side, and he looked out at the sea, and she did not brush the hair back herself. She left it where it was. She thought: I will leave it. I will see what happens if I leave it.
Nothing happened. He did not try again. They walked on.
She told him, as they walked, about the flat she had lived in. She told him about the leak in the bathroom ceiling that the landlord would not fix. She told him about the radiator in her bedroom that clanked at night. She told him about the bookshop where she worked, and the woman who owned it, who was called Eileen, and who had once been a librarian, and who had a habit of putting the books she liked best in the window even when no one bought them. She told him about the kettle in the bookshop that whistled a different note depending on the weather. She told him about the bus she took to work. She told him about Daniel. She told him only a little about Daniel — that he had been an architecture student, that he had been kind, that he had left her slowly, the way one leaves a window open in winter and only notices in March that the room is cold.
He listened. He did not interrupt. He walked beside her, and his shoulder was a hand’s breadth from hers, and he did not touch her, and she did not touch him, and she told him all of this, and he listened to all of it. When she stopped talking, after a long time, he did not ask her any questions. He did not say: I am sorry. He did not say: you deserved better. He said: the kettle that whistled in different weather — I would like to hear it.
She looked at him. She said: you would like to hear a kettle.
He said: I would like to hear a kettle that whistled differently depending on the weather. I have only ever heard a kettle that whistles the same way every time. I would like to know that a kettle could change its mind.
She did not know what to do with this. She said: I will take you to the bookshop.
He said: the bookshop is not here.
She said: I know.
He said: but I would like to go.
She stopped walking. He stopped walking. She turned to look at him. He was looking out at the sea. She said: the bookshop is in another place.
He said: I know.
She said: you cannot come with me to the bookshop.
He did not answer. They walked on. The sea went on. The light did not change.
In the evening, they sat in the parlour. He had made a fire. He had lit it without asking her, and the fire was small, and the room smelled of woodsmoke, and she sat in the chair by the window, and he sat on the floor in front of the fire with his back to the chair, and he read his book, and she did not read, and she watched him read.
After a long time he turned a page and said, without looking up: what are you thinking.
She said: I am thinking that you called me something earlier.
He turned another page. He did not look up. He said: I called you something.
She said: at breakfast. You called me by a name. It was not my name.
He was quiet for a long time. He turned another page. Then he closed the book. He put his hand on the cover. He looked at the cover. He said, in a voice that was very quiet: what did I call you.
She said: you called me Anne.
He said nothing.
She said: my name is Maeve.
He said: I know your name is Maeve.
She said: then why did you call me Anne.
He said: I don’t know.
She said: you don’t know.
He said: no. I heard myself say it. I did not know I was going to say it. It came out the way a thing comes out when one has said it many times, in a place I have not been.
She looked at him. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the fire. She thought: he has said the name Anne before, in another life he does not remember. She thought: I am not Anne. I have never been Anne. She thought: someone, somewhere, has been Anne, and he has called her that, and the sound of it has come with him, and he did not know it was in him.
She said: all right.
He said: I am sorry.
She said: I know.
He opened the book again. He did not read. He held it in the shape of reading. She watched him. She thought: he is more afraid of himself than he has been of me. She thought: he does not know what he is. She thought: neither do I. But I am beginning to think that the not-knowing is going to be the centre of whatever this is.
She thought: I will not ask him tonight. I will let him sit by the fire and hold his book and not know what to call me, and I will sit in the chair and watch him, and the fire will go down, and we will go to bed, and in the morning there will be tea.
She said: what is the book.
He said: The House in the Field.
She said: I have read the first pages.
He said: I have read all of it.
She said: what happens.
He said: a woman lives in a house. A man comes to the house. The woman lets him in. The man stays.
She said: is that all.
He said: that is most of it.
She said: does she love him.
He said: she does not know that she loves him until he is gone.
She said: is he gone.
He closed the book. He looked at the fire. He said: I have not read that far.
She thought: you are lying.
She thought: you have read it all, and you know what happens, and you do not want to tell me, because the thing that happens in the book is the thing that is happening here.
She did not say so. She said: all right.
The fire went down. They sat in the parlour. The light did not change. The clock, in the hall, still said three.
