Selected Stories

by William Trevor

  ‘You wanted a home-from-home.’

  ‘I don’t think you love me any more.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then tell Mrs Edwina what she can do with her horrid old room and let’s live in a house.’

  ‘But, dear, the children.’

  ‘Drown the brats in a bucket. Make a present of them to Mrs Edwina for all I care. Cement them into a wall.’

  ‘We’ll just get into bed for five minutes -’

  ‘I don’t want to get into bed today. Not the way those sheets are.’

  ‘OK. We’ll go and have a Babycham.’

  ‘I’d love a Babycham.’

  When the house was empty except for themselves it was best. It often was empty in the early afternoon, after the woman who came to clean had gone, when Gerard’s mother was out, doing the voluntary work she had recently taken up. They wandered from room to room then, poking into everything. Among other items of interest they found letters, some written by Gerard’s mother to Rebecca’s father, some by him to her. They were in a dressing-table drawer, in a slim cardboard box, with a rubber band around them. Twice the love affair had broken up. Twice there were farewells, twice the admission that one could not live without the other. They could not help themselves. They had to meet again.

  ‘My, my,’ Rebecca enthused. ‘Hot stuff, this.’

  After their weekend visits to the two who had been wronged Gerard and Rebecca exchanged reports on Sunday evenings. Gerard’s father cooked and used the washing-machine, vacuum-cleaned the house, ironed his own shirts, made his bed and weeded the flowerbeds. Rebecca’s mother was in a bedsitting-room, a sorry sight. She ate nuts and chocolate while watching the television, saying it wasn’t worth cooking for one, not that she minded in the least. She was keeping her end up, Rebecca’s mother insisted. ‘You can see,’ she confided, ‘why I didn’t think I should look after you, dear? It wasn’t because I didn’t want you. You’re all that’s left to me. You’re what I live for, darling.’

  Rebecca saw perfectly. The bedsitting-room was uncomfortable.

  In one corner the bedclothes of a divan, pulled roughly up in daytime, were lumpy beneath a stained pink bedspread. Possessions Rebecca remembered, though had not known were particularly her mother’s – ornaments and a tea set, two pictures of medieval people on horses, a table-lamp, chairs and floor rugs and, inappropriately, a gong – cluttered the limited space. Her mother’s lipstick was carelessly applied. The same clothes she’d worn in the past, smart then, seemed like cast-offs now. She refused to take a penny of alimony, insisting that part of keeping her end up was to stand on her own two feet. She’d found a job in a theatre café and talked a lot about the actors and actresses who bought cups of coffee or tea from her. All this theatrical talk was boring, Rebecca reported on Sunday evenings: her mother had never been boring before.

  Gerard’s father, hurrying through his household chores so that he could devote himself to entertaining Gerard, was not the same either. He was more serious. He didn’t spread himself about in the sitting-room the way he used to, his legs stretched awkwardly out so that people fell over them. Another boy had once shown Gerard how to untie his father’s shoe-laces and tie them together while his attention was diverted. His father had never minded being laughed at; Gerard wasn’t so sure about that now.

  ‘She said she had three miscarriages,’ Rebecca reported. ‘I never knew that.’

  Gerard wasn’t certain what a miscarriage was, and Rebecca, who had been uncertain also, explained that the baby came out too soon, a lot of mush apparently.

  ‘I wonder if I’m adopted,’ Gerard mused.

  The next weekend he asked his father, and was assured he wasn’t. His father said his mother hadn’t wanted more than a single child, but from his tone Gerard decided that she hadn’t wanted any children at all. ‘I’m a mistake,’ he said when he and Rebecca were again alone.

  Rebecca agreed that this was probably so. She supposed she should be glad she wasn’t just a lot of mush. ‘You be the detective,’ she said.

  Gerard rapped with his knuckles on the parquet floor and Rebecca opened and closed the door.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Hotel detective, lady.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I’ll tell you so what. So what is I have grounds for believing you and your companion are not Mr and Mrs Smith, as per the entry in the register.’

  ‘Of course we’re Mr and Mrs Smith.’

  ‘I would appreciate a word with Mr Smith, ma’am.’

  ‘Mr Smith’s in the lavatory.’

  ‘Do you categorically state that you are named Mrs Smith, ma’am? Do you categorically state that you and the party in the lavatory are man and wife?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Do you categorically state you are not in the prostitution business?’

  ‘The very idea!’

  ‘Then what we have here is a case of mistaken identity. Accept my apologies, ma’am. We get all sorts in the Grand Splendide these days.’

  ‘No offence taken, officer. The public has a right to be protected.’

  ‘Time was when only royalty stayed at the Grand Splendide. I knew the King of Greece, you know.’

  ‘Fancy that.’

  ‘Generous to a fault he was. Oh, thank you very much, lady.’

  ‘Fancy a cocktail, officer? Babycham on the rocks OK?’

  ‘Certainly is. Oh, and, ma’am?’

  ‘How can I help you, officer?’

  ‘Feel free to ply your trade, ma’am.’

  ‘A little brother,’ Gerard’s mother informed them. ‘Or perhaps a sister.’

  Gerard didn’t ask if this was another mistake because he could tell from the delight in his mother’s eyes that it wasn’t. There might even be further babies, Rebecca speculated when they were alone. She didn’t care for the idea of other children in the house. ‘They’ll be the real thing,’ she said.

  Something else happened: Gerard returned after a weekend to say there had been a black-haired Frenchwoman in his father’s house. She strolled about the kitchen in stockinged feet, and did the cooking. One result of this person’s advent was to cause Gerard to feel less sympathetically disposed towards his father. He felt his father would be all right now, as his mother and Rebecca’s father were all right.

  ‘That’ll be nice for you,’ Rebecca’s mother remarked sourly when Rebecca passed on the information about the expected baby. ‘Nice for you and Gerard.’

  When Rebecca told her about the Frenchwoman she said that that was nice too. These were the only comments she made, Rebecca told Gerard afterwards. Keeping her end up, her mother engaged in a tedious rigmarole about some famous actor or other, whom Rebecca had never heard of. She also kept saying the rigmarole was funny, a view Rebecca didn’t share.

  ‘Let’s do the time she caught them,’ Rebecca suggested when she’d gone through the rigmarole for Gerard.

  ‘OK.’

  Gerard lay down on the parquet and Rebecca went out of the room. Gerard worked his lips in an imaginary embrace. His tongue lolled out.

  ‘This is disgusting!’ Rebecca cried, bursting into the room again.

  Gerard sat up. He asked her what she was doing here.

  ‘A cleaner let me in. She said I’d find you on the office floor.’

  ‘You’d better go,’ Gerard muttered quietly to his pretend companion, pushing himself to his feet.

  ‘I’ve known for ages.’ Real tears spread on Rebecca’s rounded cheeks. Quite a gush she managed. She’d always been good at real tears.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry, my God!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She forgot her panties. She left her panties by the wastepaper basket when she scurried out.’

  ‘Look -’

  ‘She’s on the street without her panties. Some man on the tube -’

  ‘Look, don’t be bitter.’

  ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I be whatever I wa
nt to be? Isn’t anything my due? You were down there on the floor with a second-class tart and you expect me to be like the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘I do not expect you to be like anyone.’

  ‘You want me to share you with her, is that it? What a jolliness!’

  ‘Look -’

  ‘Oh, don’t keep saying look.’

  Rebecca’s real tears came in a torrent now, dribbling on to a grey cardigan, reddening her eyes.

  ‘I’d better go after her,’ Gerard said, picking up, in pantomime, a garment from the floor.

  The baby was born, a girl. The black-haired Frenchwoman moved in with Gerard’s father. One Sunday evening Rebecca said:

  ‘She wants me back.’

  That day had been spent trailing round flats that were to rent. Each time they entered one Rebecca’s mother told whoever was showing them around that she worked in the theatre, and mentioned actresses and actors by name. Afterwards, in the bedsitting-room, she said her new life in the theatre had helped her to pull herself together. She said she felt a strength returning. She intended to take the alimony. She saw it differently now: the alimony was her due.

  ‘So are you, dear,’ she said. If there was difficulty, a court of law would put the matter right, no doubt about that: a child goes to the mother if the mother’s fit and well.

  ‘What did you say?’ Gerard asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not that you’d rather be here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you rather be here, Rebecca?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gerard was silent. He looked away.

  ‘I couldn’t say it,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘I see you couldn’t.’

  ‘She’s my mother,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  A week ago they had been angry together because unhappiness had made her mother foolish. A week ago Gerard said his father had reverted to something like his old self, his legs stuck out while he read the newspaper. But it was far from being the same as it had been. His father reading the newspaper like that was only a reminder.

  Rebecca’s real tears began, and when the sound of sobbing ceased there was silence in the room they had made their own. Gerard wanted to comfort her, as once his father had comforted his mother, saying he forgave her, saying they would try again. But their game wouldn’t stretch to that.

  They sat on the virgin floor, some distance away from one another, while the white shafts of sunlight faded and the washed-out yellow of the walls dimmed to nothing. Their thoughts were similar and they knew they were. The house that had been Rebecca’s would be Gerard’s because that was laid down now. Rebecca would come to it at weekends because her father was there, but she would not bring with her her mother’s sad tales of the theatre, nor would Gerard relate the latest from his father’s new relationship. The easy companionship that had allowed them to sip cocktails and sign the register of the Hotel Grand Splendide had been theirs by chance, a gift thrown out from other people’s circumstances. Helplessness was their natural state.

  A Bit of Business

  On a warm Saturday morning the city was deserted. Its suburbs dozed, its streets had acquired a tranquillity that did not belong to the hour. Shops and cafés were unexpectedly closed. Where there were people, they sat in front of television sets, or listened to transistors.

  In Westmoreland Street two youths hurried, their progress marked by a businesslike air. They did not speak until they reached St Stephen’s Green. ‘No. On ahead,’ one said when his companion paused. ‘Off to the left in Harcourt Street.’ His companion did not argue.

  They had been friends since childhood; and today, their purpose being what it was, they knew better than to argue. Argument wasted time, and would distract them. The one who’d given the instruction, the older and taller of the two, was Mangan. The other was a pock-marked, sallow youth known as Lout Gallagher, the sobriquet an expression of scorn on the part of a Christian Brother ten or so years ago. Mangan had gelled short hair, nondescript as to colour, and small eyes that squinted slightly, and a flat, broad nose. ‘Here,’ he commanded at the end of Harcourt Street, and the two veered off in the direction he indicated.

  A marmalade cat sauntered across the street they were in now; no one was about. ‘The blue Ford,’ Mangan said. Gallagher, within seconds, forced open the driver’s door. As swiftly, the bonnet of the car was raised. Work was done with wire; the engine started easily.

  In the suburb of Rathgar, in Cavendish Road, Mr Livingston watched the red helicopter touch down behind the vesting tents in Phoenix Park. Earlier, at the airport, the Pope’s right hand had been raised in blessing, lowered, and then raised again and again, a benign smile accompanying each gesture. In Phoenix Park the crowds knelt in their corrals, and sang ‘Holy God, We Praise Thy Name’. Now and again the cameras caught the black dress of clergymen and nuns, but for the most part the crowds were composed of the kind of people Mr Livingston met every day on the streets or noticed going to Mass on a Sunday. The crowds were orderly, awed by the occasion. The yellow and white papal flags fluttered everywhere; occasionally a degree of shoving developed in an effort to gain a better view. Four times already the cameras had shown women fainting - from marvelling, so Mr Livingston was given to understand, rather than heat or congestion. Somewhere in Phoenix Park were the Herlihys, but so far Mr Livingston had failed to identify them. ‘I’ll wave,’ the Herlihy twins had promised, speaking in unison as they always did. Mr Livingston knew they’d forget; in all the excitement they wouldn’t even know that a camera had skimmed over them. It was Herlihy himself who would be noticeable, being so big and his red hair easy to pick out. Monica, of course, you could miss.

  Mr Livingston, attired now in a dark-blue suit, was a thin man in his sixties, only just beginning to go grey. His lean features, handsome in youth, were affected by wrinkles, his cheeks a little flushed. He had been a widower for a year.

  Preceded by Cardinal Ó Fiaich and Archbishop Ryan, the Pope emerged from the papal vesting chamber under the podium. Cheering began in the corrals. Twice the Pope stopped and extended his arms. There was cheering then such as Mr Livingston had never in his life heard before. The Pope approached the altar.

  Mangan and Gallagher worked quickly, though with no great skill. They pulled open drawers and scattered their contents. They rooted among clothes, and wrenched at the locks of cupboards. Jewellery was not examined, since its worth could not be even roughly estimated. All they found they pocketed, with loose change and notes. A transistor radio was secreted beneath Gallagher’s jacket.

  ‘Nothing else,’ Mangan said. ‘Useless damn place.’

  They left the house that they had entered, through a kitchen window. They strolled towards the parked blue Ford, Mangan shaking his head as though, having arrived at the house on legitimate business, they disappointedly failed to find anyone at home. Gallagher drove, slowly in the road where the house was, and then more rapidly. ‘Off to the left,’ Mangan said, and when the opportunity came Gallagher did as he was bidden. The car drew up again; the two remained seated, both their glances fixed on the driving mirror. ‘OK,’ Mangan said.

  Mr Livingston heard a noise and paid it no attention. Although his presence in the Herlihys’ house was, officially, to keep an eye on it, he believed that the Herlihys had invited him because he had no television himself. It was their way to invent a reason; their way to want to thank him whenever it was possible for all the baby-sitting he did – not that there wasn’t full and adequate payment at the time, the ‘going rate’ as Monica called it. Earlier that morning, as he’d risen and dressed himself, it had not occurred to him that Herlihy might have been serious when he said it was nice to have someone about the place on a day like this, when the Guards were all out at Phoenix Park. The sound of the television, Herlihy suggested, was as good as a dog.

  ‘A new kind of confrontation,’ stated the Pope, ‘with values and trends which, up to now, have been unknown and alien
to Irish society.’

  Mr Livingston nodded in agreement. It would have been nice for Rosie, he thought; she’d have appreciated all this, the way she’d appreciated the royal weddings. When his wife was alive Mr Livingston had hired a television set like everyone else, but later he’d ceased to do so because he found he never watched it on his own. It made him miss her more, sitting there with the same programmes coming on, her voice not commenting any more. They would certainly have watched the whole of the ceremony today, but naturally they wouldn’t have attended it in person, being Protestants.

  ‘The sacredness of life,’ urged the Pope, ‘the indissolubility of marriage, the true sense of human sexuality, the right attitude towards the material goods that progress has to offer.’ He advocated the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Penance.

  Applause broke out, and again Mr Livingston nodded his agreement.

  Gallagher had wanted to stop, but Mangan said one more house. So they went for the one at the end of the avenue, having noticed that no dog was kept. ‘They’ve left that on,’ Mangan whispered in the kitchen when they heard the sound of the television. ‘Check it, though, while I’m up there.’

  In the Herlihys’ main bedroom he slipped the drawers out softly, and eased open anything that was locked. They’d been right to come. This place was the best yet.

  Suddenly the sound of the television was louder, and Mangan knew that Gallagher had opened the door of the room it came from. He glanced towards the windows in case he should have to hurry away, but no sound of protest came from downstairs. They’d drive the car to Milltown and get on to the first bus going out of the city. Later on they’d pick up a bus to Bray. It was always worth making the journey to Bray because Cohen gave you better prices.

  ‘Hey,’ Gallagher called, not loudly, not panicking in any way whatsoever. At once Mangan knew there was a bit of trouble. He knew, by the sound of the television, that the door Gallagher had opened hadn’t been closed again. Once, in a house at night, a young girl had walked across a landing with nothing on her except a sanitary thing. He and Gallagher had been in the shadows, alerted by the flush of a lavatory. She hadn’t seen them.