The Love Department

by William Trevor

  ‘No. You have mistaken me. The man I am seeking is a live one.’

  ‘The one you describe, madam, has been in heaven since half past five yesterday afternoon. Slaughtered by a motor-car in Putney High Street.’

  Lady Dolores fell over. She dropped to the street and lay in a faint at the feet of the elderly man. ‘Madam,’ exclaimed he, bending and blowing in her face. ‘Here, come and help me,’ he called to some people who were walking by. ‘A woman’s passed out.’

  ‘Why,’ said one of these people, ‘that’s Lady Dolores Bourhardie. I’ve seen her on the telly.’

  Another person agreed with this opinion, and added:

  ‘Fancy this in Putney!’

  Lady Dolores was lifted and propped against the wall of the house in which Septimus Tuam in his lifetime had resided.

  ‘Isn’t she stout?’ said one of the passers-by. ‘I’d never have thought it.’

  ‘She’s to do with the fellow that copped it,’ said the elderly man. ‘She was asking about him when suddenly she folded up. She’s O.K., is she? It’s not a double death?’

  ‘Double death in Putney,’ said one of the others, speaking facetiously.

  But Lady Dolores, as if to dissipate these fears, rose to her feet. She had never fainted before, either in public or in private. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘You’re a national figure,’ said one of the people who had helped her. ‘Lady Dolores. You fix people’s troubles.’

  ‘I’m extremely sorry,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘I had business here. It is now not necessary. I was taken aback.’

  ‘Poor fellow,’ said the elderly man. ‘He was walking along the pavement, proper as could be. I’m afraid you’ll have no further business with him, madam.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was hit by a taxi-cab. He was strolling along with an umbrella up, it being raining stair-rods.’

  ‘The taxi swerved,’ another person said, ‘to avoid a man who ran out into the road. It seems a guy on a bicycle dropped some article which this second party thought was a dog and so ran to the rescue.’

  ‘No,’ said the elderly man. ‘The second party thought it was something valuable. He was retrieving it for the cyclist. It was, in fact, a pair of gloves.’

  ‘What?’ said Lady Dolores.

  ‘A pair of gloves caused all the trouble. Yellow things.’

  Lady Dolores frowned. ‘This cyclist,’ she said. ‘What became of him?’

  ‘Rode on, oblivious. The cyclist didn’t know a thing.’

  ‘Didn’t know a thing,’ another voice confirmed. ‘Rode on.’

  There was a long gap in the conversation while all considered the facts of the accident.

  ‘So a cyclist’s gloves,’ said Lady Dolores ponderously, ‘have caused the death of a man.’

  ‘It is strange enough,’ agreed the elderly man, ‘when you put it like that.’

  ‘The cyclist rode off,’ said a woman who had not spoken before. ‘The cyclist was innocent.’

  ‘You cannot blame the cyclist,’ said another.

  Lady Dolores went away as the voices continued. The people stood by the house where Septimus Tuam had lived, and talked on for another five minutes about the death of a man and the fainting of Lady Dolores on his doorstep.

  Although she greatly disliked walking, she walked now. She was aware of a flatness of spirit, and she was still incredulous. He had been there on the pavement with an umbrella, and now he was dead. An accident had taken place in the rain. She thought of Edward Blakeston-Smith on his bicycle, and found the thought ironical: Edward Blakeston-Smith pedalling in the rain, throwing away his wash-leather gloves before quitting the city. ‘Oh, my dear,’ said Lady Dolores. He would not know, she imagined; he would never return to the love department, he would never be told. He had prepared for her a revenge that was as sweet as it could be; he had put her into a position of unassailable power, and she herself had given him the gloves. ‘I thought you bred bulldogs,’ Lady Dolores whispered. ‘Imagine my thinking that.’ And Septimus Tuam stood before her, shaking his head. ‘Well, at least we have met,’ said Lady Dolores, and she reached out a hand and took the arm of Septimus Tuam and dominated him completely. She called up her powers, the gift she’d been given: she had a way with people. ‘You have a way with you,’ said Septimus Tuam, and she smiled at him and still held his arm, and asked him to lend her two pounds ten, which Septimus Tuam did not hesitate to do.

  ‘What good is death?’ cried Lady Dolores on Putney Bridge, looking over the parapet. ‘Death is no good to me.’

  ‘Now,’ said a Sikh bus conductor who was passing by. ‘Do not do that, lady.’

  ‘I have fallen in love with you,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘I cannot do without you for a second of my day.’

  They went together to restaurants and rode about in taxi-cabs. They drank coffee and whisky, and talked the hours away while Septimus Tuam paid out his money for every single item. ‘I cannot understand it,’ he said. ‘I have a way with people,’ said Lady Dolores.

  ‘No,’ repeated the Sikh bus conductor. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You spoke of death, lady.’

  ‘There is a great emptiness.’

  The Sikh bus conductor, a kind man, did not know what to do about this woman with spectacles who was speaking of death and looking into the Thames. He wished to comfort her, but felt a shyness.

  ‘You do not know me,’ said Lady Dolores, ‘but he would have come to know me well. He was to have turned to me and said one day, “I have no money left, I’m skint.” And then I would not have hesitated. “No money?” I’d cry. “No money left?” I’d run a lipstick over my lips. “Cheerio, Septimus Tuam,” I’d murmur. And his room would be filled with the wailing of the defeated and the gnashing of teeth of an evil man cut off in his prime. And the tears, sir, would be the tears of a broken heart, of a damaged organ that would never mend while the River Thames flowed, while the trees grew in the parks of London. Septimus Tuam on his knees would make confession. He would cast himself down before the face of God, abasing himself in his guiltiness.’

  The Sikh bus conductor paid attention to these statements and considered their import. The streets of this city were strange in that people spoke strangely on them. I know her face, he said to himself.

  ‘And he would lie there an hour, or maybe three hours,’ said Lady Dolores in a singsong voice, thinking of the holy language of Edward. ‘He would lie on the boarded floor of his room, while his sins rose high before him, filling out all the room. And the faces of the women would appear unto him, the women from the roads and the avenues, the streets and crescents, the luxury lanes, the parks and the squares. The faces would come weeping as he was weeping, and the tears of the women would flow over the penitent and cleanse him as best they could. He would rise up in the end and wipe his eyes, and see that it was dusk. He would leave that room, turning over a new leaf in his life. He would go to a sandwich bar and eat good food, and for the rest of his days he would perform honest duties.’

  ‘I have seen you in my house,’ said the bus conductor. ‘You’ve been on the box: an advertisement for Scottish oats.’

  ‘Not Scottish oats. No, not that. I am Lady Dolores Bourhardie, well known in my way.’

  ‘I have seen your face.’

  ‘It appears in the homes of this country. It is the face that God gave me; I have never complained.’

  ‘You are as your God has made you,’ said the Sikh bus conductor. ‘For me it is different.’

  ‘I sit alone, pet. I read the letters and compose replies. The girls clatter their typewriters, the young men sing. And when they have gone their way, I sit alone in the love department and think of Septimus Tuam. Now it seems I may think no more. I have been robbed of victory; and in an ironical way.’

  Lady Dolores, her face pale and her deep eyes dead within it, left the Sikh bus conductor. ‘I think I shall never weep again,’ she said as she walked away
. ‘I shall mourn his death until kingdom come.’ She hailed a passing taxi and said to the driver, ‘I have been robbed of my fair victory,’ and told him then to take her to the love department. That taxi-driver, having seen the Sikh bus conductor in conversation with the woman and noticing that he now remained on the pavement glancing after her, grimaced amusingly, his eyes indicating Lady Dolores. But the Sikh bus conductor did not return this grimace. He stood in perplexity on Putney Bridge, reflecting again that the streets of London were full of strangeness.

  26

  James bought many gardening books and read them all from cover to cover. He read about fuchsias and fritillaria, convolvulus, immortelles, wisteria, pinks, plume poppies and toadflax. He sat alone at night in the empty house reading about the cultivation of flowers and shrubs and all domestic vegetables. Though the gooseberry, he learnt, will grow on the poorest soil, it will not produce really fine fruit unless planted in a deep, rich, well-drained loam, and treated generously. Fresh air and sun are essential to the gooseberry. James planted gooseberry bushes five feet apart, and cut the bushes back to a moderate extent. He planted them in well-drained loam, and hoped for the best.

  He had employed two men to help him. ‘Never seen the like,’ the two men said, and appeared to enjoy marvelling over the neglected garden. ‘Some rare stuff here,’ they remarked, examining old Mr Bolsover’s shrubs, not knowing, really, whether they were rare or not. When it was dark, James read the gardening books and wondered how long it would take to get the place into shape again. He wandered from room to room, as he had wandered after his father died, and as he had again with the estate agent. He looked at the place where the estate agent had screwed his heel into the rotten board, and wondered what to do about it.

  Late one afternoon, while clearing some ground for asparagus beds, James heard the sound of a car, and looked up and saw his wife. She came towards him and stood on a path that the men had recently tidied.

  ‘Hullo,’ said James.

  He showed her all that had been happening in the garden. He showed her all the gooseberry bushes, and where sweet-pea was to grow and lily-of-the-valley, and cauliflowers, cabbages, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, celery and celeriac, broad beans and early carrots. ‘There’ll be strawberry beds,’ said James, pointing. ‘The men are in the greenhouses.’

  Eve walked through the house with him, from one large room to the next, looking up at the ceilings. He showed her where the estate agent had damaged the floor-board. ‘All have to be redone,’ said James.

  As he laboured in the gardens, James often thought about the eight fat men in the board-room. He heard their voices and saw the sun glint on their spectacles. Clinger talked on about door-handles, Mr Linderfoot strolled still about the corridors, eyeing the young girls, the Captain slept, the others talked and drank gin with tonic water in it. They would proceed thus for ever, James imagined: he saw them dying in the board-room.

  For the time being, though, and as James imagined, the men continued in their ways. They ate their lunches and talked of minor matters; they returned by night to their wives in their houses, who saw them coming and prepared the room for them, switching on a television set. ‘It is the way of the world,’ said Lake. ‘Life has its ups and downs. One must take them in one’s stride.’ He smiled in his shame, cutting his losses and seeking advancement elsewhere. He became, eventually, the manager of a tobacconist’s shop in Wandsworth. Miss Brown married an architect.

  ‘These wallpapers have been up for thirty years,’ said James. ‘What colour, I wonder, were they in the first place?’

  Eve suggested colours that seemed suitable, and added that wallpapers nowadays didn’t fade as easily. James said:

  ‘The elderly don’t notice much.’

  ‘No,’ said Eve, shaking her head. ‘I don’t suppose they do,’

  ‘How’s Septimus Tuam?’ said James. ‘How’s he getting on these days?’

  They were standing in the centre of the drawing-room when James said that. The furniture, Eve thought, was uglier than she’d remembered it. She walked away from James. She spoke with her back to him, looking through the window at an ash-tree.

  ‘He came one morning, the day after that dinner party, and he helped me in his peculiar way with the housework. He had damaged my stocking with the tip of his umbrella in the button department of Ely’s: he came to give me other stockings instead.’ Eve related these details because she had not spoken of them before. She told James all there was to tell, how Septimus Tuam had captivated her, causing her to imagine scenes in a country of the Middle East, and Arabs who danced in celebration.

  ‘I find it hard to visualize the chap,’ said James agreeably. ‘Well, well.’

  ‘I behaved like a schoolgirl of fourteen.’

  ‘I would have thought not. Do schoolgirls of fourteen take on lovers?’

  ‘I meant I was as silly.’

  ‘You are thirty-seven. It’s an age of discretion, Eve.’

  ‘James, could we come here? The children and I?’

  James explained that he had set the machinery of divorce going. He said that a housekeeper would come to the house in time, and the children could come too. ‘You’ve got Septimus Tuam,’ he said, ‘in his low-slung motor-car.’

  ‘I haven’t got Septimus Tuam.’

  ‘Well, don’t blame me. Why haven’t you?’

  ‘He went off. I gave him three hundred pounds.’

  ‘You’ve been taken in by an adventurer,’ said James. ‘Shall I light a fire?’

  ‘Do as you wish. I know about being taken in.’

  ‘They are two a penny,’ said James Bolsover.

  On the lawns of the hotel the Bolsovers had strode together, hand in hand. They had cut a cake, and a bearded photographer had darted about with a camera. It was dim in Eve’s mind now: she could hardly make out the details. ‘Let’s begin again, James,’ she cried, as she had cried on the night of the dinner party, while he slept in an arm-chair.

  ‘You’re as bold as brass,’ said James. ‘You’ve got no shame.’

  Eve said she had shame in plenty, and added that even as she had made the suggestion she had felt it to be brazen.

  ‘It’s a pig in a poke,’ said James, ‘if ever there was one.’

  ‘There was love that let us down. Now at least there is less to lose. And love may come again.’

  ‘May it?’ said James Bolsover, and struck a match and lit a fire.

  ‘It may,’ said Eve after a moment. ‘Who can tell about a thing like that?’

  ‘Some was my fault,’ said James. ‘I am generously admitting it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think so. It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘I had too little understanding. I wanted too much. I was stupidly romantic.’

  ‘A ridiculous name for a man to have,’ said James. ‘I’ve said that before.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘A debt is owed to him: one must be fair.’

  Eve turned her back and walked away from her husband. She felt empty of everything. She said:

  ‘Are you going to grow verbena?’

  ‘I may,’ said James. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Though at the moment, I confess, what you are saying interests me rather more. Why should we set up again, since success is in the lap of the gods and failure already a proved thing between us? Wouldn’t it be better not to?’

  ‘There are the children.’

  ‘A marriage, you said, should not be bridged by children. Or some such phrase. You were quite right.’

  ‘What then?’ cried Eve, feeling that James was being unduly difficult and yet not quite blaming him. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Other people have stuck by one another for the sake of children: it’s the modern thing to do.’

  ‘If Septimus Tuam hadn’t come along we’d have stuck by one another and never questioned it.’

  ‘Will you forget him?’

  ‘I shall remember him with bitterness.’

  ‘Per
haps we might come alive. You never know. Growing verbena together and being the best of pals, while you get over your bitterness.’

  James knelt down and blew at the fire with his mouth.

  ‘A young man is going to pray for us,’ said Eve. ‘He is going to pray for this marriage every day of his life.’

  ‘Pray?’ said James, looking up at his wife. ‘What young man?’

  ‘He came to our house on the night of that dinner party. He arrived with the old man. He came to see me again, to tell me about his praying.’

  James rose to his feet and regarded Eve earnestly. ‘A friend of Mrs Hoop’s,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t he? There was some talk also about his being the Poaches’ son.’

  ‘He was neither, as it turned out. He said he had been employed in a love department.’

  ‘But isn’t it odd? Don’t you think it’s odd? I remember his face. What on earth’s a love department?’

  Eve said she didn’t know.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘There’s a small chance for us,’ said James. ‘I suppose there is. It isn’t much.’

  The Bolsovers stood in silence, watching the fire begin to burn. Then they walked again about the house and saw fresh signs of damp and decay, or signs they had missed before. Watery sunlight spread over furniture and floors, revealing much that was amiss. The Bolsovers were nervous in the house, and felt it correct to be so. They walked gingerly together, in silence until James said:

  ‘Why ever should he pray for a marriage? I don’t get it.’

  ‘You have forgiven me with kindness,’ said Eve. ‘I must thank you for that.’

  ‘He must be crazy,’ said James.

  27

  ‘You are required on the telephone,’ said Brother Edmund to Edward in the garden of St Gregory’s, interrupting a game of draughts.

  ‘Mind you come back,’ said Brother Toby, and laughed and looked around for his pipe.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Am I speaking to Blakeston-Smith?’

  ‘You are,’ replied Edward. ‘How are you getting on, Lady Dolores?’