Everything in Its Place

Vera Mead put the bolts on at a quarter past eleven, as she had every night for thirty years, and the Anchor changed the way a theatre does when the audience has gone: the brass stopped being decoration and became furniture, and the fire became an ordinary fire. Old Barnaby slept in the corner with his chin on his chest. Vera poured two small sherries without asking and set one in front of you.

“You’ve been at the register again,” she said. “Is it Josiah?”

“Partly. I’d like to know what else you didn’t say on Thrift Day.”

She wiped her hands on her apron, went to the till and took an envelope from under the tray. It had a crest on it. Inside was a printed notice from Crane Estates: the rent of the Anchor to double from Quarter Day, ‘in view of changed circumstances’. It was dated Wednesday.

“I put it under the tray on Wednesday,” she said, “and on Thursday I laid on the best supper this room has seen in ten years, and not a man in it knew. I told jokes. I did the nod.” Her mouth did something small and tired. “You’ll want to know why.”

“If you’d said, the room would have wobbled.”

“It would, love.” Vera sat on Penhale’s stool, perhaps without noticing, and looked at the fire. “You think the snug does it by itself. Same stools, same nod, nobody makes us. But somebody has to keep doing it, every night, deciding what sort of night it is. Some nights that’s me.” She looked at you steadily. “Josiah came in at half past eleven and I knew at once he’d dropped out of his part. I put the brandy in front of him and I didn’t ask. That’s all I’ve got to be ashamed of. I kept the play going.”

“Luhmann says it rebuilds itself,” said Jonah, softly, “but there’s somebody doing the rebuilding.”

“Several of us,” said Vera. “Mostly women, in my experience.”