The Quilting Circle – Part 2: Sunday Soup

Walter's soup was dreadful. It was thin and salty and tasted faintly of burnt onion, and Beatrix ate two bowls of it at his kitchen table every Sunday without complaint, because the window looked out over the maple trees and the sun came in across the oilcloth in long gold stripes.

"You're lying," said Walter, watching her spoon.

"I'm being polite."

"You're being a liar. You've never once been polite in your life."

"I've been polite to you for three months."

"Only because I give you biscuits," said Walter, and she laughed, and he looked pleased with himself.

They finished the quilt in November. It was a log cabin pattern in faded reds, browns and creams, with a border of blue calico and a single square in the centre that Walter had stitched himself, badly, in a crooked, wandering line.

"That's the bit my wife would have hated," he said.

"It's the best bit," said Beatrix. "It's the bit that's yours."

They wrapped the quilt around themselves on the porch, the cold air sharp and clean, the stars coming out over the hills. Walter's arm rested along the back of her chair. Neither of them moved it.

"Can I ask you something?" said Beatrix, looking out at the dark maples.

"Yes."

"Are you happy, sitting here with me, a year after your wife died? Or are you only kind?"

Walter was quiet for a long time.

"I'm both," he said at last. "I'm grateful, and I'm lonely, and I'm happier than I have been since the funeral. That's a strange thing to say, and I don't know how to say it right."

"Then say it wrong," said Beatrix softly. "I'd rather hear the wrong version than the polite one."

He laughed, low and rough, and then turned his head to look at her in the starlight.

"Can I ask you something else?" he said.

"Yes."

"Would you let me kiss you, out here on the porch, under the quilt and the stars? Not because I'm grieving. Because I've been wanting to since you told me my seam was dreadful."

Beatrix's breath caught. She had thought she had forgotten how to feel this, the flutter in the chest, the warm hesitation. She had not forgotten.

"Yes," she said. "But if I say stop, you have to eat your soup alone, and I'll be very cross about it."

"Deal," said Walter, and his face softened into something gentle and certain. He leaned in slowly, his hand coming up to rest against her cheek, rough and warm from the farm.

He kissed her carefully, unhurried, tasting of coffee and molasses. She kissed him back, her hand finding his, her fingers curling round his stiff ones. The quilt slid a little on their shoulders, and neither of them bothered to fix it.

When they parted, both of them were smiling, a little tearful.

"Green?" he asked.

"Green," said Beatrix. "Very green. Now finish your soup, Walter, and then teach me to make the terrible kind, so I can be polite about it for the next forty years."

"Forty years?" said Walter, delighted. "You're making plans?"

"I'm making a quilt," said Beatrix. "They take a very long time."