The Receipt in the Gardening Book

At seventy-six I received my first invitation to a date by means of a library receipt. Elliott borrowed my copy of a gardening book and returned it with the receipt tucked beside the chapter on difficult soil. On the back he had written, Lunch on Friday? Somewhere without advice about mulch.

I telephoned him rather than writing my answer. We lived on different floors of the same building, and I disliked making a production of things that could be settled in a sentence.

“Yes,” I said. “But you can ask me directly next time.”

“I wanted you to be able to pretend you hadn’t seen it.”

“My eyesight isn’t that bad.”

He laughed. I had been hoping to hear that laugh again since he first helped me lose an argument with the communal washing machine. The machine was right, as it turned out. I was using a setting intended for something much smaller than a duvet.

Elliott was seventy-nine. He moved into the building in spring, bringing too many books and a chair his daughter described as unsuitable. He kept the chair. I liked that about him before I understood how much I would come to like everything else.

I had been widowed six years. My marriage lasted forty-eight, most of them good, some exhausting, none as tidy as people made them sound after Peter died. I missed him. I also liked choosing the radio station and sleeping with the window open. Both facts could sit quite comfortably in one room.

I wore a red jacket to lunch because it made my face look less tired. Elliott wore a tie, then admitted he had taken it off and put it on three times before leaving his flat. We ate in a small restaurant near the park, where the waiter addressed us individually rather than asking him what his wife would like.

That small courtesy made the afternoon easier. We talked about our previous homes, his work in a packaging factory and my years managing a school office. He asked whether I missed work. I said I missed being good at something other people needed, though I did not miss parents explaining why their child’s late arrival was the fault of traffic nobody else encountered.

He laughed into his napkin. I felt fifteen and seventy-six simultaneously, an inconvenient arrangement for anybody trying to look composed.

After lunch we walked around the park. Slowly, because his knee hurt and I had chosen attractive shoes with no moral character. He offered his arm. I took it. At the pond we watched a small boy feed ducks from a bag while his mother explained that the bag was not also food.

“I’d like to do this again,” Elliott said.

“So would I. In better shoes.”

He bent and kissed my cheek outside the building. I turned towards him and kissed him back, surprised by how little courage it required once I began. Then the lift opened behind us and Mrs Haines stepped out with a trolley full of frozen peas. We all managed the moment badly, which improved it considerably.

By the end of summer we had a regular Thursday supper. Sometimes he cooked. Sometimes I did. He liked films with complicated escapes. I liked films where people spoke clearly enough to follow their motives. We compromised by complaining together about whichever one we watched.

My daughter, Claire, met him in September. She was polite, interested and slightly too loud. Elliott answered at his ordinary volume. After he went downstairs to collect a book she wanted to borrow, Claire asked how serious it was.

“Serious enough for him to know I dislike beetroot.”

“Mum.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

She said she was glad I had company. I said I had friends before Elliott. She looked hurt and told me not to twist everything. We both became busy with cups until he returned.

Later she called to apologise for the volume. Her grandfather had been hard of hearing and she fell into a habit when nervous. I accepted the apology and admitted I had been looking for an offence before she offered one. We were both out of practice at treating my life as something still capable of surprising us.

One afternoon Claire invited us both to her house. Elliott met her husband and lost a game of cards to my grandson, who won with no apparent respect for his guest’s age. Driving home, Elliott said it had been a pleasant afternoon. I agreed, then realised I had spent most of it watching my daughter for signs of approval. She had behaved perfectly well. The person waiting for permission was me. At the next junction I asked whether Elliott fancied stopping for ice cream. He did, and neither of us telephoned anybody to explain the delay.

The real difficulty came with a photograph. Peter’s picture stood on the little sideboard beside the window. He was fifty in it, laughing at something outside the frame. Elliott never seemed troubled by it. I assumed that meant he understood.

One evening I found him looking at the photograph before supper. He asked where it was taken. I told him about a holiday when the hotel lost our reservation and Peter persuaded a fisherman to rent us an upstairs room. It was one of my favourite stories. I told it well.

Elliott listened. Then I told another, about Peter meeting the same fisherman years later at a petrol station. By the time we sat down to eat, Elliott had gone quiet.

I asked whether he was tired. He said a little. He left earlier than usual. I washed the plates and thought he might be getting ill. The possibility frightened me enough to call the next morning.

He said he was perfectly well. Then he paused so long I asked what the matter was.

“Sometimes I feel I’m being invited into a life where the best part has already happened,” he said.

I sat on the bed. “I’ve never said that.”

“I know.”

“You asked about the photograph.”

“I did.”

I could hear how foolish we were making each other sound. I told him he knew I had been married. He said yes, and that his own marriage had lasted forty-one years. Neither of us had arrived without a history. He did not want the picture removed. He wanted to know whether I was curious about things we had not yet done.

The question made me cross because I was. I was curious about his rough hands, his absurd chair and how he looked when he forgot he was being watched. I was curious about waking in a house where somebody other than myself put the kettle on. I had not said most of those things because at my age desire was supposed to become companionship before anybody had to discuss it.

“Come upstairs,” I said. “This is a terrible conversation for the telephone.”

He came. We sat opposite each other with no cups to tidy. I told him I was happy with him and that happiness did not make missing Peter dishonest. Elliott said he understood. He missed his wife too, though they had not always known how to enjoy each other’s company by the end.

It was the first time he said anything about their marriage that wasn’t ceremonial. We talked for nearly two hours. He had resented being expected to know what she needed without being told. I had resented doing the telling in mine. We laughed at how conveniently we had each found somebody who could supply the opposite complaint.

“Do you want to go away with me?” I asked.

He blinked. “Now?”

“Not this minute. I’ve got a delivery coming.”

He laughed, then said yes. We chose two nights in a town with a large indoor garden and a hotel close enough that neither would have to prove anything by walking too far.

Planning the trip revealed how much we did not know. He liked breakfast early. I liked reading in bed. He wanted to travel light, then produced a bag large enough for a small migration. I wanted separate rooms and was embarrassed to explain why.

“I like sleeping alone,” I said finally. “It isn’t a judgment on you.”

“I assumed we’d have separate rooms.”

“Why?”

He looked at me. “Because I like sleeping alone.”

We sat in silence for a moment, then laughed so loudly somebody knocked to ask if we were all right. The trip became easier after that.

Claire offered to drive us. I thanked her and said we had booked the train. She asked for the hotel name and I gave it, recognising the difference between ordinary care and being asked to submit an itinerary for approval. When she said she hoped I had fun, I heard her mean it.

The town was colder than expected. We arrived hungry, failed to find the hotel entrance and spent fifteen minutes walking around the back of a building we were meant to approach from the front. Elliott became irritable. I became brisk, which is how I disguise being irritable. By the time we checked in, neither wanted to see a garden.

We went to our separate rooms. I took off the attractive shoes I had once again brought against all available evidence. Twenty minutes later somebody knocked. Elliott stood outside holding a packet of biscuits.

“A peace offering,” he said. “Although I don’t know who declared war.”

“The hotel architect.”

He came in. We ate the biscuits sitting in two chairs beside the window. When the irritation passed, I told him I would like to begin the afternoon again. He said he would too.

The indoor garden contained palms, a pond and a bench where we sat longer than any of the informational signs required. Elliott took my hand. Nobody looked twice. For years I had imagined that falling in love late in life must feel like an exception people would either applaud or find ridiculous. Mostly, it felt like sitting beside a man and wanting him to move a little closer.

That evening we ate fish, talked about the morning train home and went upstairs together. At my door he kissed me properly. I said I would see him at breakfast, and he said he would try not to order before I arrived. Both promises held.

After we came home, I moved Peter’s photograph. Not into a drawer. Onto the bookcase, where there was better light and room for other pictures. On the sideboard I put a small plant from the garden shop. Elliott noticed the next Thursday and said it looked healthy. I said it had been in my possession for only four days, so judgment was premature.

He laughed and set down the bag of groceries. We cooked together, badly at first because we both wanted the same little area beside the sink. I told him to move. He told me to ask more pleasantly. I tried again, and he moved.

After supper he asked if I had any plans for my next birthday. I said only to reach it. He said he had an additional suggestion, involving the coast and an entirely reliable pair of shoes. I reached across the table for the calendar.