Vivienne had imagined Vera staying after the singing. That was the admission she could make across the remains of lunch, although she could not make it without trying to give it a little elegance. There had been no particular street in her imagination, no decided route along which they might walk holding hands. She had wanted to sing something Vera would remember. More awkwardly, she had wanted Vera to remain when there was nothing left to sing. The walk belonged to their conversation here, a possibility that had acquired shape between bites rather than waiting fully formed behind the original invitation.
She directed Vera towards the last corner of her food before she could offer away the whole of Friday. Then, almost as an afterthought that mattered rather more than its delivery suggested, she asked about this afternoon. Vera was free for some of it. Her swim remained her own, and she intended to go alone. Vivienne was instructed not to look tragically waterproof. But Vera was still at the table, still interested in the invitation being made. Wanting her to stay had been a perfectly good answer; it had nearly disappeared beneath Vivienne's account of the concert. What, precisely, did Vivienne want now?
Ten minutes in a bookshop. Vivienne wanted something to read that Vera had not already finished, something over which Vera could not immediately produce that tiny expression when Vivienne defended the wrong person. There would be no drawing expedition, no attempt to accompany the swim. Vera could choose a book too, but Vivienne wanted her own choice to belong to her. Lunch had contained quite enough description of what she sounded like. She wanted another subject between them, an argument they had not yet begun and could not already know how to finish.
Vera accepted, while declining the remarkable authority this bestowed upon her facial expressions. A book she had read would not be confiscated. She would find something herself; there was pleasure in the prospect of their both being wrong before either possessed the evidence to prove it. The ten minutes mattered, however. She knew how a shelf containing an unfortunate heroine could detain Vivienne. And the last piece of tart still belonged to Vera. Agreeing to a bookshop was no reason to surrender lunch before she had finished enjoying it.
Vivienne had finished. She offered the tart no competition, then spoiled her claim to distinguish a bookshop from a rescue mission by qualifying it. Usually, she could. There was something else she ought to correct. Her defences of those fictional women were not always expressions of affection or conviction. Sometimes she knew they had behaved badly. Sometimes what she wanted was to make Vera hesitate. Prolonging an argument for that reason was dreadful, she conceded, and also very enjoyable. Would Vera still accompany her if no improvement whatsoever were promised?
Agreement over every chapter would have disappointed Vera. She had no wish to make Vivienne easier to agree with, nor did she pretend to be untouched by the challenge. Yet an argument deserved more than a position abandoned as soon as it had made her blink. What Vera liked was the moment Vivienne stopped watching to see whether she was winning. Her speech grew faster then. It was a particular observation, close enough to be a compliment without requiring either woman to become solemn. Vera finished her tart and asked for the catalogue. If Vivienne wanted to unsettle her, she could choose something she actually wanted and allow Vera to discover why.
Vivienne handed it over. A travel book, she said. Perhaps an old one: she liked finding what somebody had thought worth bringing home in a sentence. She wanted to open it upon somewhere unfamiliar. There would be no tragic heroine recruited to correct its geography. Vera could select something entirely sensible and undermine this attempt to be unexpected, but they ought to go and discover what the shop contained. Otherwise they would have chosen its whole stock without leaving the table. For once, the desire had arrived before the argument prepared to defend it.
Vera secured the catalogue beneath her arm, the unchanged portrait with its woman of two mouths still part of their afternoon. Geography had not caused her smile. She had liked hearing Vivienne want something before working out whether Vera would approve. Her own shelf remained undecided; ten minutes of uncertainty might have to be endured. They had agreed to go, but neither book had been chosen and the swim still lay ahead. There was one question Vera wanted answered on the way. When Vivienne opened that travel book, was she seeking somewhere she would go alone, or somewhere she would want to show somebody?