Seconds

Ruth knew which of the bowls would rock before the woman put it down. There was a thickening under one side of the foot. From her own table she had watched people lift it all afternoon, pass a hand round the blue interior, then put it back on the folded cloth, where it sat perfectly well.

Now the woman wanted to see it against the white of the windowsill.

“That one isn't quite level,” Ruth said.

The woman held it in the air. Eva, who was finding a box, stopped with one hand inside another box.

“On a hard surface,” Ruth added.

She had meant to tell Eva earlier. Before they opened would have been the time. But Eva had arrived late with two bags of rolls and her son, and Ruth had been left to move the signs out of the rain. Then people came.

The woman set the bowl down. It clicked as she pressed the rim, and clicked back when she let go.

“Oh,” she said.

“I can take something off,” Eva said.

“No, no. It's lovely.”

The woman lifted it once more. Inside, the blue ran into a pale patch like a cloud seen through deep water. Ruth disliked comparisons of this kind, particularly when customers made them, but she could not find a better one. The bowl was good inside.

“I'll have another look round.”

Eva put the box underneath her table. The woman went into the room where Martin was selling prints. They could hear her laughing at something he said.

“Sorry,” Ruth said quietly.

Eva straightened the folded cloth.

At half past four Ruth's takings were enough to cover the materials for her cups, though not the hours. She had sold four. A man had asked if he could have six for the price of five, and she had explained that making the sixth took the same time as making the first. He had bought two from Eva instead, cups with fat handles and little green checks, and left them in their wrapping beside the cake plate while he looked round.

Ruth had taught Eva to pull a handle. Five years ago, at an evening class. There was no reason to keep remembering this. Eva had made hundreds since.

On the wall behind Eva hung a photograph of her holding a broad platter against her stomach. She had brought it for a magazine interview and left it up. Ruth's own notice was a sheet of prices. She had a photograph somewhere, taken for the council, but her eyes were shut.

Eva's son came in carrying a strip of raffle tickets.

“Did you win?” Ruth asked.

“It's not till five.”

“You might win the bowl.”

“I don't want a bowl.”

He was eleven now, too old to sit under Eva's table with his drawing things. All afternoon he had been doing small jobs for people who mistook his boredom for willingness. He took a roll from the bag, opened it to inspect the filling, and put it back.

“That one's cheese,” Eva said.

“I know.”

“Then why did you open it?”

He went out with the roll. Eva looked at the clock and began gathering the little price cards from her empty spaces.

“There's still half an hour,” Ruth said.

“I'm only doing these.”

Ruth took her ledger out. Four cups, one small dish. The dish had been a sale she had forgotten, to a young man who said it was for his cat. She had wrapped it as carefully as anything else.

“You can flatten that foot,” she said.

Eva did not answer.

“If you want to.”

“I know how.”

From the print room came a loud scraping. Martin was shifting his shelves again. He liked the room to look full even when he had sold things. Ruth had once helped him carry the same framed landscape between three walls while he decided where its absence would be least noticeable.

Eva sat down. The chair was low; her knees came almost to the underside of the table. Without looking at Ruth, she said, “You could have told me.”

“I just did.”

“Before her.”

Ruth closed the ledger. “I didn't want her to get it home and find out.”

“All right.”

“It would have reflected on all of us.”

Eva looked at her then, but Ruth was putting the elastic round the ledger, and when she had finished Eva was looking away again.

The woman returned from Martin's room with a long flat parcel. She had chosen a print of the railway bridge. Ruth recognized it by the one corner sticking through the tissue.

“I've been thinking about that blue one.”

Eva stood up.

“My sister would love it. She puts things everywhere. I wondered what you could do on the price.”

“It's forty-eight,” Eva said.

“Yes. You mentioned—”

“Forty.”

The woman considered. Ruth stood very still behind her own table.

“Would you do thirty-five?”

Eva picked up the bowl, holding it with a hand inside so that the woman could no longer see the glaze.

“Forty,” she said.

“Of course. That's fine.”

While Eva fetched the box, the woman smiled at Ruth. It was a small, companionable smile. Ruth bent to retrieve a sheet of wrapping paper that had not fallen.

The woman left with both parcels. Eva wrote something in her notebook. Ruth wanted to say that the woman would probably have asked for a reduction anyway. She had the manner of someone who did. But Eva was counting her change and Ruth let her count.

At five they did the raffle in the corridor. Eva's son won a bottle of wine and was furious when Martin announced that his mother would have to collect it. Everybody laughed. Ruth, coming out to watch, stopped laughing before the others. The boy pushed the ticket into Eva's hand and went to get his coat.

Afterwards Eva put the bottle on the floor by the door. She was taking the bus, and there were already three boxes to carry. Ruth asked if she wanted a lift.

“Are you going that way?”

“I can.”

“We have to pick up his boots from his dad's.”

Ruth knew where that was. It added twenty minutes, more if the traffic was bad. She would have liked Eva to decline for this reason, then liked her less for waiting to see whether she meant it.

“That's fine,” she said.

They packed separately. Ruth's cups went into the divided boxes she had made for them, each in its own square. She took down the price sheet and found a dark rectangle on the wall where the paint had stayed clean. Eva was trying to fit a jug sideways between two wrapped plates.

“I've got room,” Ruth said.

“I'd rather keep mine together.”

“Of course.”

At the car the boy claimed the front seat. Eva told him to get in the back; he said he felt sick in the back. Ruth moved her bag off the passenger seat.

“There you are,” she said, too brightly.

Eva stood holding the last box while Ruth moved the others in the boot. The empty compartments in Ruth's cup box were the right size for the wine, but its neck stood above the lid. She tried it one way, then another.

“I'll have it with me,” Eva said.

Ruth handed her the bottle and shut the boot. Inside the car the boy was adjusting the heater, turning every dial before the engine was on. Eva knocked on his window and held up the roll he had left on the table. He shook his head. She waited. At last he opened the door far enough to take it.

Ruth got in and moved her seat forward. She had not driven with someone behind her for some time. Her knees were closer to the wheel than she liked. She reached down for the lever again, then left it.