The Silence at the Table

The table had been extended, which it only was at Christmas and when there was something to announce. Hazel had put the extra leaf in herself on Saturday evening, fighting the stiff hinge in the middle exactly as her husband used to.

Callum arrived at one with Ruth and two bottles, one of which was clearly meant for the occasion and stayed unopened on the dresser. Nessa came at ten past, having driven up from the coast, and said the traffic had been fine, which it never is.

The contract had been signed on the Thursday. The completion date was the fourteenth of next month. All three of the others knew this, having been told separately by Hazel in three careful telephone calls, and each of them assumed that they were the one who would be expected to raise it.

So they talked about the potatoes. Ruth asked what was in the gravy and was told, at length. Nessa said the rosemary by the back door had gone woody and ought to be cut right down, and then heard the sentence land and reached for the water.

"You could take a cutting," Hazel said, in the tone of somebody handing over a small, sensible object. "It roots in about a fortnight. It came from the hedge at your grandmother's, so it's older than any of you."

Nessa said she would. Callum, deliberately not looking at his sister, asked whether anybody wanted more, and the dish went round again although nobody was hungry. That was the first real pause, and it lasted about four seconds.

Had one of them simply said the word "solicitor", the whole afternoon would have turned and become something else — sad, probably, and much easier. Nobody did. They were all being kind, and being kind in that family has always meant going first only when you are certain the other person wants you to.

Ruth, who had married into it and could therefore see it from outside, watched the three of them being extremely polite to one another and decided, as she had decided at two previous lunches, that it was not her sentence to say.

Between the plates and the pudding, Hazel went out to the garden for ten minutes. Through the window they saw her standing by the shed with her arms folded, not doing anything, and all three of them looked away at the same moment.

When she came back in, she mentioned that the removal van was booked for the Tuesday and that the spare room would have to be emptied before then, and it was said so lightly that it could be answered lightly, which was the point.

Callum said he would come on the Sunday before with the car. Nessa said she could take two days off. Ruth offered boxes. In four sentences the thing was arranged, and none of the four sentences contained the word house.

They washed up together, which took longer than it needed to, and at half past four the cars were loaded with the things Hazel had put aside for each of them: the blue dish, a box of photographs, a cutting of rosemary in wet kitchen paper.

On the doorstep Hazel said, "Well." Nessa said, "Yes." Whatever was meant by that was understood by everybody and repeated by nobody, and when the second car had gone Hazel went back in and took the leaf out of the table on her own.