Dear Alice,
You asked whether I enjoyed the play or merely enjoyed being alive to see it. I had not thought of separating those until you did. I believe I enjoyed the play, although the set was dreadful and from row C the kitchen door appeared to open directly into a bookcase.
I bought the ticket myself. That matters. Since the accident, people have brought me meals, magazines, warm socks, and three invitations to things I would never have chosen. A council dinner. A lecture on making the most of each day. A boat trip, from someone who plainly hadn’t read to the end of the news report.
Owen was in row C too. I didn’t know he’d be there. His daughter had bought the tickets, and he was waiting for her to park when I came down the aisle. He stood so quickly that the seat folded against his legs. I had to wait for him to untangle himself before I could say hello.
The last time we’d met was at the council presentation. They gave him a certificate for helping pull three of us from the water after the launch capsized. There had been six people on that boat. Whenever somebody says I’m lucky, I think of the three who aren’t here to be asked about it. I am lucky. I don’t always want the conversation that comes after the word.
The certificate photograph makes Owen look tall. In the theatre he was shorter than I remembered, and wearing a cardigan with one sleeve stretched down over his hand.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m glad to be out.”
I used to say I’m fine. It led to questions I couldn’t answer. Glad to be out is true, and usually allows the other person to mention the parking.
He said, “That’s good.”
I could see he had another question. His daughter arrived before he asked it. Her name is Lottie. She teaches small children, and greeted us both with the brisk pleasure of someone who has spent the day asking people to stop licking shared objects. She was hungry. She had hoped he’d bought the programmes and saved her a place in the bar queue. He had done neither.
“We have four minutes,” she said. “Dad, can you get me a bag of crisps?”
He went. I was relieved, and then ashamed of being relieved. I have begun noticing how often those two things arrive together.
The play was about a man who had promised his wife he would look after her aunt’s cat. The cat was never on the stage. We heard it behind various pieces of furniture, and the man kept entering rooms by the wrong door while explaining that everything was going splendidly. You would have hated the main actor’s voice. He made ordinary sentences sound as if he’d just discovered them written on a very important envelope.
For the first ten minutes I sat quite stiffly. Lottie was enjoying her crisps with careful little movements so that the packet didn’t crackle. Owen watched the stage as if waiting for someone to make a mistake with a ladder.
Then the wife came home early. Her husband said the cat had spent a peaceful evening in the sitting room. At that moment somebody offstage pushed a single enormous paw under the kitchen door.
Not a real paw. A padded glove, absurdly larger than the cat described. The husband looked at it, then at his wife, and said, “She’s had her supper.”
I laughed before anyone else did.
It came out loudly. The actor waited. Lottie laughed, and then the room laughed. I laughed again because I couldn’t seem to stop, and the man onstage regarded the audience with the weary dignity of somebody whose household troubles had become entertainment.
My chest hurt afterwards. Not dramatically. I had sat too rigidly and laughed too hard. I shifted my shoulder and watched the next scene.
Owen wasn’t laughing. I was aware of that for the rest of the first half.
At the interval Lottie went to the bar. He and I stayed in our seats. I tried to think of something harmless to say about the bookcase door. Instead he spoke.
“You looked frightened when you saw me.”
“I was surprised.”
“At the presentation too.”
I could have blamed the photographer. He had asked us to move closer until my shoulder touched Owen’s, and I remember thinking how strange it was to be touching him without either of us pulling the other anywhere.
“I don’t know how to meet you,” I said. “I keep feeling I should find something new to thank you for.”
He rubbed the stretched cuff between his fingers.
“I don’t know how to meet you either.”
That was not what I had expected. I thought he knew what to do. In my mind he had become the man who came when people needed him. In his own life, he was a man who hadn’t bought his daughter’s programme.
“They keep asking me how I knew what to do,” he said. “I didn’t. I saw your hand and got hold of it. Other people held me. The whole time, I thought we were going to lose you.”
His voice stopped there. He looked at the stage. The enormous paw lay behind the half-open door, abandoned for the interval. It looked ridiculous and oddly lonely.
“I was frightened,” he said.
“I know.”
Then I corrected myself. “No. I didn’t know. I thought you weren’t.”
He nodded once. We sat without inventing anything better to say. I was grateful to him, and I was sorry he’d had to feel that fear. Neither feeling made the theatre the right place for a ceremony.
When Lottie came back she gave her father a glass of lemonade. She had bought him a programme too. He offered to pay; she said he’d pay next time. It sounded like an arrangement they already had, which was a comfort to hear.
In the second half the husband attempted to return the wrong cat. It was a smaller paw this time. The wife said she preferred the new one because at least it didn’t know where they lived.
Owen laughed at that. Quietly. I noticed, but I didn’t turn to look at him. I wanted him to be allowed to laugh without becoming another thing I ought to be thankful for.
Afterwards Lottie offered me a lift. I accepted. I had meant to walk home, to prove I could have an ordinary evening, which is not quite the same as wanting to walk home. It was raining anyway.
In the car she complained about the children at her school, lovingly and with impressive specificity. One had put a raisin in the pencil sharpener to discover whether it would become a grape. Owen asked why a grape. She said that was the question she’d been asking all afternoon.
I was sorry when we reached my gate.
You also asked whether people expect you to be grateful all the time after something bad happens. They do, sometimes. They also expect you not to laugh too much. Often they are the same people. I don’t have advice about your own days. I know you are tired of being congratulated on coping, and I won’t add to the pile.
I enjoyed the play. I missed the people who weren’t there. I had a poor view of the left-hand door and an excellent view of the paw. I am going again next Friday, to a different play, because that is when the cheap seats are available. If you can leave Martin with his sister for the evening, I would like you to come. You said she had offered. If you can’t, I will tell you about it, including the bad bits.
I shall choose row D. Three inches higher might make all the difference to the bookcase.
Love,
Beatrice
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