Before the Last Train

Felix packed his tuning tools on Saturday morning and left the case beside the front door, where it was impossible to overlook.

By lunchtime he had stepped over it twice.

The job was on Sunday. He needed to travel that evening, stay overnight and arrive early enough to work on the piano before the building filled with people who wanted to use it. There was nothing unusual about this. He spent a great deal of his life reaching an instrument before somebody else needed it.

He had meant to tell Marta when he accepted her invitation. Then he had meant to mention it the previous Saturday. On Friday he had opened a message, been interrupted by a telephone call and put his phone down without sending anything.

Now it was almost time to leave for the pension, and the unsent message looked less like a useful piece of information than evidence.

He deleted it. He would tell her when he arrived.

Outside, a pale strip of sky remained above the rooftops. The snow along the shaded side of the street was still firm, but water ran in a narrow line beside the kerb. Someone had cleared the steps at Café Vesper and put a chair outside to keep people away from the wet paint on the handrail.

The chair was working remarkably well as a place to lean while talking.

Felix reached Pension Linden with the tool case in one hand and his overnight bag in the other. Marta opened the door and looked down.

“Have you come to stay?”

“The opposite, I'm afraid.”

She moved aside. “What does that mean?”

“I've got a job tomorrow. I'm taking the last train this evening.”

“This evening?”

“There's plenty of time to eat.”

Marta glanced towards the winter garden, where Lena was helping Ruth with the clasp of a necklace. Emil's voice came from the kitchen.

“When do you need to leave?”

Felix told her.

She did a quick calculation. He could almost see the things moving: dinner, coffee, the walk to the station. He wished he had sent the message.

“Why didn't you say?”

“I thought I had.”

The words came out easily. They were also untrue, and Marta's expression suggested she knew it.

“Actually,” he said, “I meant to.”

She took his coat. “Put your bags here.”

At the table, Ruth had returned to her preferred chair. Lena had a book beside her plate which she was lending to Marta, though an inscription on the inside cover made it clear that Marta had originally lent it to Lena.

“I'm returning it with enthusiasm,” Lena said.

“That's different,” Ruth agreed.

Dinner was the mushroom goulash from the first Saturday. Felix was glad. He remembered it well, although apparently not well enough to have remembered to tell the person cooking it that he had a train to catch.

Marta brought the pot through. Emil carried the polenta. For a few minutes everyone was occupied with serving themselves, passing the bread and making room for the jug.

“You can have seconds,” Marta told Felix. “There is time.”

He looked up. “I know.”

“I'm telling myself.”

Her honesty made him smile. He helped himself and stopped checking the clock.

They talked about Lena's workshop window, which had developed a whistle in a particular wind. Emil said it was probably the seal. Ruth said it was probably a sign that the window should have been repaired when Lena first mentioned it in November.

“I was enjoying the optimism,” Lena said.

Felix offered to look at it when he came back. Emil looked at him.

“You know about windows?”

“I know about small things vibrating when they shouldn't.”

“A broader qualification than it sounds,” Ruth said.

For a while the evening was simply pleasant. Felix listened to a story about a parcel, ate more bread and noticed how the winter garden had changed since the first week. There were no spare things stacked on chairs now. The lamp had found a better position. Marta sat far enough from the kitchen door that she had to make a deliberate decision to get up.

When she eventually rose to fetch coffee, he followed with the empty serving dish.

“Leave that by the sink,” she said.

He did.

There was a small dessert in a bowl beside the kettle. He hadn't known there would be one.

“I can miss coffee,” he said.

“You don't have to miss anything. I just would have arranged it differently if I'd known.”

He nodded. “I'm sorry.”

Marta leaned against the counter while the kettle heated.

“It's not that you have to stay.”

“I know.”

“I'm not sure you do. You say you'll probably come, or you'll see how the day goes. And then I'm left trying to work out what that means.”

He had thought of those phrases as considerate. They kept things flexible; they didn't demand anything. Seen from the other end of a dinner invitation, they appeared rather less useful.

“I come back on Tuesday,” he said. “I'll be here next Saturday. And if that changes, I'll tell you.”

Marta poured water into the pot.

“That will do.”

There was no need to improve on it. He carried the cups through.

After dessert, Ruth asked him about the instrument he was going to work on. He described a piano that had spent a season in a room much drier than it liked. Emil remarked that he knew several people with similar complaints.

“Some of us are sitting beside the radiator,” Ruth said.

Otto, stretched on the velvet chair, offered no defence.

Felix left when he had said he would. It felt oddly formal to stand up at the appointed time, then pleasantly simple. Nobody looked surprised. Lena wished him a good journey. Emil asked if he needed help with the cases, apparently forgetting that Felix carried them for a living. Marta handed him his coat.

“Tuesday,” she said.

“Tuesday.”

From the garden gate he could see the winter room between the curtains. Ruth was saying something with one hand lifted. Emil leaned back, laughing. Marta returned to her chair.

He watched for a moment, then went down the hill.

At the station, the waiting room was warm enough to take off his gloves. A child was asleep against someone's shoulder. The clock above the platform moved with the faint click he had known for years.

Felix took out his phone and sent Lena a message.

*Thursday afternoon for the window, if that suits you. About three.*

Her reply arrived before the train.

*Three suits me. I'll put the kettle on.*

He put the phone away and moved his cases nearer the door.