The restaurant on the fifth floor closes at four and the tables are stripped and the till is cashed. Every night at half past four table nine is laid. Two places, the good china, the way it was laid in the days the restaurant had a string trio. The till rings an afternoon tea for one, at the price from a menu the store has in a frame. The camera shows one chair go back, and a cup lifted, and set down, and the second chair does not move, and at six the table is stripped and the cup has been drunk from.
I am the restaurant manager on the fifth floor of a department store and table nine is by the window and it is the table people ask for, and one person does not need to.
The restaurant.
A room on the top floor with windows over the square, white cloths, an afternoon tea that is the store's one remaining claim to anything. It closes at four. The tables are stripped, the till is cashed, the doors are locked at half past.
At half past four, table nine is laid.
The laying.
Two places. Cloth, the good one. Cups and saucers from the old service, which is in a cabinet for display and is not used. Plates. The three tier stand. Napkins folded the old way, which nobody on my staff can do, and which I have had to learn from a photograph.
The till rings an afternoon tea. For one. At the price on the menu in the frame by the door, which is from the sixties, and which is a price the till does not have and accepts.
The camera shows the near chair, the one facing the window, go back, and something sit, and the cup lifted and set down, and a scone, which is not there, being buttered, the small movements of it, and the other chair, the one with its back to the window, does not move, and is not pulled out, and its place is laid and not touched.
At six the table is stripped. The cup, before it goes, has a tide mark of tea in it, and a lipstick mark on the rim, a colour that was a colour once, and the second cup is clean.
What has been checked.
The service, locked in the cabinet. The table is laid with it.
Table nine, at half past four, by me, in the second chair. That was a mistake and I knew it was a mistake and I did it because I am the manager and it is my restaurant.
The table was laid around me. The near chair went back. Somebody sat. The cup was lifted. And there was, in the room, the sound of the string trio, from the corner where they used to play, faint, the way music is in a restaurant when you are not listening to it, and the sound of a room full of people having tea, and across the table from me, from the near chair, a woman's voice said, quietly, as if she had been saying it for a very long time and had stopped expecting an answer, you're late.
I did not say anything. I did not know what I was allowed to say. The cup went down. The scone was buttered. And at six the chair went back and the room was empty and the trio had stopped and I was in a chair that had not been sat in for sixty years and I had not been who she was waiting for.
Who.
Two women who came every Thursday for afternoon tea at table nine, the oldest waitress remembers being told, by the waitress before her. Sisters, or friends, the story is not sure, for thirty years, until one Thursday one of them did not come, and the other sat at nine and waited, and had her tea, and came the next Thursday and the next, and laid for two, and the restaurant let her, because what else, and she did it for years, and then she did not come either.
She is still coming. Every night. Laying for two. And the other one is still late.
What is done about it.
The afternoon tea rings on the till every night at a price the menu has not carried in sixty years and the finance office has it as a till error and I have stopped correcting them, and the head waiter has asked me who lays nine, and I have said, a regular, and he has said, for two, and I have said, she's expecting somebody.
What I do.
I manage the restaurant.
I do not sit in the second chair. That was the mistake. It is not mine. But a restaurant with a regular who lays for two and is always alone has one job, which is not to let her sit there and be stood up in silence, and the old waitresses knew that, and the oldest one told me what they used to do.
So I do it. At half past four I go to table nine, and I say what they said, which is, good afternoon, madam, the usual, and I pour. From the pot that is not there, into the cup that is, and I stand with the pot, and I say, she may have been held up at the shops, and I say, I'll bring a fresh pot when she comes, which is what they said, every Thursday, for years.
The second cup is not clean in the mornings now. That is new. It has been drunk from. The lipstick is a different colour on it, and the second chair, at six, is pushed back, and the till rings for two, at the old price, and I have started to think that whoever was late has stopped being, and that all it took was somebody to say she was expected.