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The Short Way Home
There is a kind of company in which a pause doesn't have to be filled. I like the thought of walking beside someone who can stop to adjust a sock without apologising for the interruption, while I stand looking at a gate or a patch of grass. A conversation can become easier when neither person has to keep her face arranged for the other. You are both going somewhere. For a little while that is enough.
I want to stay with the pleasant part before deciding what might be wrong with it. The moving air, the weight of a coat beginning to feel less necessary, somebody beside you who remembers the point you were making before a bicycle passed. Being asked to go out can be a relief when getting yourself as far as the door has become a disproportionate undertaking. I mean the ordinary reluctance, too. No great sorrow is required to make a person glad of company.
Here are two women in a walk I am inventing. One has suggested a route with a long, gradual hill. The other agrees, then finds after half an hour that her shoes are rubbing. She says so. Her friend offers the short way back, and the relief is immediate: she can stop quietly calculating the distance on every downhill stretch. They turn. There is still plenty to say. The woman with the sore feet can enjoy the rest of the walk.
That seems a good afternoon to me. I am reluctant to spoil it by deciding that the helpful friend has secretly been keeping an account. She can mean the offer. She can also have wanted the hill. I would like to allow that small want to survive without making either woman ashamed of it.
Perhaps they arrange another walk. The woman whose feet hurt buys more comfortable shoes, but on the morning itself she is slow to get ready. She would rather repeat the shorter route. It is familiar now; she likes knowing where they will turn. Her friend agrees a little too quickly. A sleeve is tugged down over a wrist. Nothing terrible has happened. Yet the agreement has taken some of the ease out of setting off.
I can feel myself wanting to mend this at once. Have them speak plainly. Give the disappointed woman her hill and the other woman a pleasant way to say she doesn't want to climb it. There are several reasonable arrangements available. The difficulty is that the shorter walk may already mean being chosen to the woman who prefers it. When her friend says she could do the hill alone, the sensible suggestion may land badly. It can take a moment to hear the actual words again.
I would leave them that moment. I would rather not turn the more comfortable shoes into evidence that one woman has done her part and is now owed an unchanged companion. Neither do I want the friend who enjoys a longer walk to become an emblem of independence, striding away to instruct the rest of us. They like talking together. They are allowed to want that enough to make the afternoon slightly awkward.
For this walk, perhaps they take the short route and stop at the turning. One goes on for another twenty minutes; the other heads home. The goodbye feels a little abrupt. I hope they arrange a next time. I would leave the shoes by the door.