When I returned to the old office I saw her again.
She was dressed in a thick woolen dress and stockings, in dark maroon shades. The dress was knee length and had sleeves that came right down to her wrists; and her stockings, too, had the same tight, thick hatched woolen knit that covered her legs down to her ankles. She was thin, tall, taller than me, a small round face, dark hair; and I loved her from a previous life.
Read more
“Let’s go to lunch,” I said,
So we stepped out onto cobbled medieval streets with closed in walls, wet from the rain, and weaved left and right, one street to another.
By way of conversation I said “I miss…“ But I couldn’t remember their names even though I could picture them in my eye: two women who had left the company.
“Yes”, she replied, more as a way of comforting my memory, or maybe to stop the conversation.
We crossed the road and immediately, boldly, I put my left arm around her thin waist and in response she slung her arm across my shoulder. We continued walking, though our pose was awkward and I had to bend slightly to accommodate her arm.
But I loved her, a warm bonded love.
“Let’s go in here,” she said and we stepped up into a pub, dark with wooden panels, and were led to a table.
I was disappointed that there were others there, already seated. They looked at us as we took the remaining corner. The table was square, rickety with a large glass pane inset in the wood surround, and they were already eating. Yet you had to be careful not to knock something over.
And we had to adjust our thin wooden bench closer to the table. A man removed a stack of smaller benches from under the table, out of the way, so that we could sit; and the waitress brought condiments and cutlery as we settled down.
I placed my hand on the glass pane. It was thick, darkened with time; I found a coarse hole I could poke my finger through.
Once the others left, it was near closing time, we could slide the table into a slot in the wall so only the end was left protruding. So we adjusted our bench a little closer and then we sat there facing the wall, alone at last.
Image by Juri Kivit from Pixabay
