Esme could tell which of her neighbours had come to supper by the noises they made on the tunnel steps. The twins always raced until the bend, where their father called them back. Her upstairs neighbour brought a loose buckle that struck the rail. Her brother used to whistle the same descending phrase every year, adding a note at each landing until he ran out of breath.
Tonight she heard his stick.
She put down the bowl of dough and went to the entrance. Beyond the curtained doorway, the city's summer dusk still held a little heat. Petrus stood on the top step with a rolled blanket under his arm.
‘I thought I'd sleep here after,’ he said.
‘Of course.’
He moved his stick forward, finding the edge. Esme took his blanket. She waited for him to reach towards her, and when he did not, she began describing the steps.
‘I remember them.’
‘They get slippery near the bottom.’
‘They did last year, too.’
She went ahead with his blanket held against her stomach. He took much longer than she wanted him to take. Behind them the curtain fell shut, and the last pale rectangle vanished from the stone.
The supper happened once a year, when the cave orchard flowered. For eleven months the vine roots drank treated household water from channels beneath the city. On this night their branches opened hundreds of soft flowers, and the bell-moths came out of the ceiling fissures to mate and carry pollen. By morning the flowers would close. Within weeks they would swell into the dark, floury fruit that fed the lower terraces through winter.
The moths were broad as palms. They found each other by faint blue pulses along their bellies. Even a shaded lamp could wash those signals out. During flowering, the orchard and its approach tunnels remained completely unlit.
Esme had spent childhood suppers trying to see her own fingers. Now she knew the room by its drafts, the heat around the bread ovens and the voices coming towards her through the dark. When the city above grew too crowded, she sometimes came down simply to sit. Nobody could search her face for an expression she had not managed to arrange.
At the last step Petrus stopped.
‘Where's the table?’
‘Same place.’
‘That doesn't help.’
She heard the effort in his level voice. She reached back, offered her elbow and brought him to a chair.
There were twenty-six places tonight, more than ever. Rainwater from a broken roof tank had flooded one of the upper kitchens, so its residents were joining them. Someone had brought lentils; someone else a jar of fiercely sour pickles. A child was already asleep on the sleeping shelf. The ovens held enough heat for the last bread if nobody kept opening them.
Petrus asked for a task.
‘Just sit. You've had that climb.’
‘It was mostly down.’
‘You know what I mean.’
He folded his hands. She could hear his thumbnail moving across the ridges of his other nails, a habit from when they were small and waiting outside the school principal's room. She should have asked what he needed before tonight. On the calls, however, he had spoken of his work, the neighbour's awful dog and a woman he was seeing. She had been relieved to keep talking about those things.
At the serving bench Hester pressed a spoon into Esme's hand.
‘Taste.’
The lentils needed salt. Esme reached for the crock and knocked something against the wall.
‘Not there,’ Hester said. ‘I moved it away from the dough.’
Esme found it. From the table Petrus laughed once, without amusement.
They had eaten in this dark together for years, but usually they could see a little. At least, Esme could: a faint distinction between stone and air, a body passing nearer, blue pulses overhead. Her brother had lost even that since autumn. He had told her plainly. Somehow she had heard a difference in degree, something a familiar room would smooth away.
One of the displaced kitchen residents, a boy called Daniel, offered his reading lamp.
‘I can point it at the floor. For the food.’
‘Not during flowering,’ Esme said.
‘Under a bowl?’
‘The moths would still—’
‘I didn't ask for a lamp,’ Petrus said.
The room went quiet in a spreading, uneven way.
‘I know you didn't.’
‘Then stop deciding which argument I'm in.’
Esme held the spoon. Somewhere above her came the dry flutter of many wings. The first males were leaving the ceiling. It was early; the orchard was warmer this year.
She asked Petrus to come to the serving bench. She wanted the conversation away from the table, away from all those listening people. Then she heard how that sounded and set the spoon down.
‘I'm sorry,’ she said. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Help with supper. Get myself a drink without taking someone away from theirs. Go to the toilet when I need to.’
Someone coughed. Hester said the route to the toilet was a nuisance for her too, with her knee. Two of the newly arrived guests admitted they could not tell which side of the room the ovens were on. A twin announced that he could tell, because his face became hotter.
‘Please don't test that any closer,’ his father said.
Esme laughed, and the room loosened a little. Not enough to make her comfortable. Enough to start doing something.
There was an old handline between the tunnel entrance and the orchard's water channels. They used it when carrying baskets during the winter power cuts. Esme suggested extending it along the serving wall.
‘And across the oven mouths?’ Hester asked.
‘No. Round the other side.’
That would pass behind the table, where the chairs stood close to the vines. The moths were now gathering there. Esme could see their lights blinking in the hanging leaves.
Petrus stood. ‘Describe the room as it is now.’
She began with the dimensions. He stopped her.
‘Where are the things people need?’
So she described those. Water at one end of the bench, food along the middle, empty bowls stacked beside the entrance. Toilet passage through the far arch. Two sleeping shelves, one occupied. Ovens against the north wall. She had to start again when she realised north meant nothing to somebody who had arrived round three bends underground.
Petrus asked Hester about the serving space. They argued over whether a table could move. Esme fetched rope. Daniel found the old rubber sleeves used to protect the vines from basket handles; he slid them over the knots so that nobody would scrape a hand. They ran a line from the entrance to the water, then along the cold wall to the toilet arch, leaving the orchard floor free.
It took more rope than they had. A neighbour went upstairs for washing line. While they waited, supper cooled.
‘We could eat,’ someone suggested.
Esme almost agreed. Then Petrus said he was hungry too, and asked whether they could bring him the empty bowls.
They shifted the stack to his place. He handed each arriving person a bowl and told them where the water was. Esme tore the bread instead of slicing it, because the knife had gone missing in all the moving. Hester kept charge of the hot pots. Two children took the cold dishes round, announcing the pickles with more excitement than the pickles deserved.
When the extra line arrived, Petrus walked it with his stick and one hand on the cord. At the water he found the jug, filled his cup too high and spilt some on his shoe.
‘Any good?’ Esme asked.
‘Put the cups on this side. Then I don't have to cross over the full ones.’
She moved them. He tried again.
At the end of the line Daniel asked which knot meant the toilet. There were three knots, all tied by different people. Esme had not thought about telling them apart. They made one large knot at the passage and wrapped a soft sleeve round the post at the water. Petrus asked for a chair halfway along the route, where Hester could rest. Hester said she would rather have it beside the serving bench. That was where she stood most of the evening.
They moved the chair there.
‘And you?’ Esme asked her brother.
‘I'd like somebody to take the bowls off me. I've been holding two out for about five minutes.’
She took them, one in each hand. When she brought them back full, he had enlisted a twin to announce each dish. The boy's descriptions became steadily less useful. The lentils were brown, the bread was brown, the pickles were apparently a dangerous green. Petrus asked whether a dangerous pickle was good with lentils. They decided to investigate. Esme left them dividing a spoonful and went to find her own place.
The rope was ugly. Even in the dark she knew that: stiff washing line, patched sleeves, a post borrowed from the compost screens. She had imagined tonight as a return to something seamless. Now there was an obstacle through the familiar room, and every person coming in had to be told about it.
Then Hester used it to stand without putting weight on her knee. Daniel followed it back from the toilet, humming. Esme began to think of where they could fix proper posts before next year.
At last she took her bowl to Petrus. He had kept a chair for her.
‘How's the woman?’ she asked.
‘She hates pickles.’
‘Oh, that's serious.’
‘I'm considering my position.’
They ate. Over the orchard the blue pulses grew denser, appearing and disappearing as wings crossed wings. Esme described them until Petrus asked her to stop. He wanted to hear the moths. She had never tried. There were so many sounds in the room: spoons, chairs, running water, somebody laughing with a mouth full of bread. She listened beyond them and gradually found a papery tremor, then lost it, then found it again.
Petrus touched her wrist when he heard it. They sat without speaking. Above them the flowers were open, and people who had finished eating began to wash the bowls.
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