Last Stories

by William Trevor

  ‘I seen you all right,’ she said. ‘One o’clock in the morning and you’d be walking the streets.’ There was a scaffold up in Liffey Lane, she said, and a shed left open. ‘Would we go there?’ she suggested.

  He shook his head again. He said he wasn’t looking for Liffey Lane. Not anywhere like that at all.

  ‘Ah, you are, you are.’

  She reached for his arm and took it, pressing it under hers. The expression on her face, serious and intent, hadn’t changed. She didn’t smile.

  ‘You’re an educated man,’ she said. ‘You have that way with you.’

  She held him tightly, her fingers clamping his arm just below the elbow. She pulled it a bit and he could feel the soft yield of a breast. ‘You’re a fine man,’ she whispered, a hoarseness coming into her voice. ‘I couldn’t go with some of them.’

  They passed into a quay and turned out of it almost at once, leaving what traffic there was behind. A siren sounded, coming from far away. No one else was about. Five minutes, the woman had said, but twenty or twenty-five passed before they reached Liffey Lane and they still went on. ‘There’s no one only myself comes over here,’ she said.

  He knew where he was. That came suddenly, in the way that knowing anything did. The woman was pressing herself closer to him but he didn’t care what she did. He didn’t listen when she talked again about where they were going, telling him they’d be quiet there. He felt for the key again to make sure it was there and it was.

  ‘I was confused,’ he said. ‘I have a groggy memory.’

  * * *

  * * *

  She wondered if he was mad. Often you’d be with a man and you’d think he wasn’t the full shilling, the attentions he’d ask for in a workman’s shed and the way he’d be giving you talk you wouldn’t want to hear. She mentioned money, saying the amount but he didn’t comment on that. He didn’t say he hadn’t that much on him the way they usually did, looking for a reduction. He was pointing at a warehouse and the next minute at another one. ‘God, it’ll be great,’ she said, making an effort to keep the conversation going.

  Denise, her name was. She’d been a dressmaker and had gone on the streets because she preferred the work and earned more there. Fifteen years ago she’d lost touch with the husband she’d married when she was young. She was older than she looked.

  * * *

  * * *

  It had happened before that he couldn’t remember where he lived. He didn’t know it had. He didn’t know that when he was distressed St Ardo’s came into his mind, that he clung to it because there was nothing else to cling to, although he didn’t know where, or what, St Ardo’s was. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the woman he was with, and she told him. She hadn’t been born Denise, she said. ‘A terrible name they give me.’

  She didn’t say what it was. He didn’t ask. Something would be wrong, he thought. Many’s the time you’d think it’d be all right and it wouldn’t.

  But when he tried the key it turned in the lock. He pushed the black door open with his shoulder.

  * * *

  * * *

  She’d never gone to where a man lived before. What took place with a man did so outside mostly, or in the workman’s shed or with luck in a car. Where she was now was a warehouse.

  He turned a light on and she followed him. They passed through a big, empty void and up a stairs that was no more than a ladder. An attempt at domestic conversion had been begun and appeared to have been abandoned. ‘You’d call me a caretaker,’ he said.

  He was different here, she thought, without the hint of the panic that had been in his manner and his voice before, nervous maybe, as often they were. She said the place was great. Convenient, she said.

  Pipes were exposed, the roof beams rough, strengthened here and there with iron clamps, floorboards unstained. Furniture was a bed, three wooden chairs, a table, a cupboard. Electric wires ran along the concrete of the walls, but there were pictures hanging there too, others stacked, one on a blackboard easel.

  ‘Well, isn’t that great!’ she said. ‘Aren’t you fixed rightly here!’

  Often there were shadows or only fragments, echoes. A tall, sleek head was nodding now. Hands reached up to lift a picture from a wall. The red stones of a brooch were bright on a dark blouse, a man’s voice saying, ‘Skill like that, you should be your own master.’ ‘Wouldn’t we fix him up with one of the warehouses?’ the woman with the brooch said. ‘Wouldn’t he be better off?’ It was the work that kept him going; he knew the work, he never made a mistake, not once, not ever. There was more to the work than the cleaning and you wouldn’t see the extent of it until you’d taken off the smoke damage. The time he was in the grey house he restored sixteen canvases, and that was written down. Always write things down, they said, and he always did. The bell would ring, you’d take the same place you always took on the bench and it might be a mutton stew or fried fish and tomatoes or rissoles. Write everything down, only sometimes he’d forget. But the way it was, he’d never forget a picture.

  ‘Would we take a beer?’ the woman who’d come with him asked. ‘Have you a beer at all?’

  * * *

  * * *

  She wondered if he heard her, and then he turned around from looking at the picture he had on the easel. ‘Giotto’s angels,’ he said.

  She didn’t understand, but when she went closer she could make out figures floating in the sky above mountain-side rocks. There was a single tree, its leaves all gone. You had to peer to make out what else there was, but when he showed her a coloured postcard of the picture it was easier. At first it didn’t look the same and he explained that the angels were a copy of only a part of it, a crooked wall left out, and people in robes gathered round a dead body. He said the copy had been left in with him to see could he restore what had been lost in damp. He showed her what he had cleared already, a patch in the bottom right-hand corner. He filled a kettle at the sink and lit a gas stove. She mentioned the sum of money she had mentioned before.

  ‘Ah no,’ he said. ‘Ah no.’

  ‘What’re you playing at, mister?’

  He didn’t say anything. He went back to the picture, dabbing it with a cloth. A smell was coming from the spirit he was using.

  ‘You’re misleading me the entire time,’ she complained, but she didn’t hurry him. You could get a man round no matter what the hold-up was. If you took it easy and let him find his own pace you could.

  There were notes stuck all round the doorframe, scraps of paper attached with drawing-pins. There were picture postcards like the one he’d shown her attached to the door itself. An old suitcase was on the floor, the lid open, propped against an iron girder in the wall. Different-coloured paints had been tried out on it in daubs, and on the inside of it and on the girder and the floor. Brushes were in jars. Empty picture frames hung from nails in the walls.

  There’s money here, she thought.

  * * *

  * * *

  He made tea when the kettle boiled. He said he was sorry if there’d been a misunderstanding. Because of his affliction, he explained, it was often like that. He looked in the cupboard for biscuits, but he must have had them all. He said he was sorry.

  ‘No matter at all.’ She came close to him, specks of spittle moistening his face when she spoke. On the streets he hadn’t noticed that her lipstick was crooked, missing in places the outline of her lips and giving her a grotesque look.

  ‘The only thing is,’ she said, ‘I’m at a loss on account of the misunderstanding.’

  He gave her what money he had, two notes kept in an inside pocket, the coppers and the silver.

  * * *

  * * *

  She counted what there was and watched him pouring tea for himself, a saucer under the cup. He didn’t add anything to it, neither sugar nor milk. He sipped it and it would have been hot. She never touched tea, she said
.

  He worked at the picture again, his cup and saucer beside him on the floor. He’d given her more than she’d asked for on the street. She could finish the night because of that. But the bed looked comfortable. A double it was, better than what she had herself.

  ‘Would you have another note,’ she said, ‘and I’ll try for beer? Would there be somewhere open?’

  He said there wouldn’t. Maclin Street, O’Donohue’s, he said, only they’d be closed up for the night.

  He went to the scraps of paper on the doorframe and found the one he wanted. She thought he was looking for somewhere that might be open, but he wasn’t. ‘Knockmell,’ he read out, and said he used to live in Knockmell. ‘I have dreams it was a Knockmell woman showed me how you’d repair a picture. I lived a long time in Knockmell and they told me that’s why I have a memory of it. I was told that and I wrote it down. I was a boy when I ran off from Knockmell. I did wrong, I don’t know what it was.’

  He had taken a paintbrush from his mouth in order to speak and he put it back, crossways between his teeth. He put paint on a smaller brush and touched the canvas with it in one place. He leant back to get a long view of the picture and then put a smear of paint on somewhere else.

  ‘I have a bad leg,’ she said.

  She could feel it troublesome now. On her feet too long would bring that on, they’d told her. A lot could go wrong with a leg, they said, you’d never know what the trouble was. ‘That’s a great bed you have,’ she said.

  She went to the bed and lay down on it. He was back with his brushes again, not talking any more. She eased her shoes off and he paid no attention. It was a well-made bed, she could tell when she got into it, the blankets smooth over the sheets, the pillow soft.

  The room was soundless now that he was silent. The clink of the cup on the saucer had ceased; the only movement was the paintbrush on the cleaned canvas, or the spirit being poured, the bottle corked again. The night noise of the city could not be heard and the stillness seemed like more of the bed’s luxury. Beneath the covers she eased off her restricting garments.

  She wasn’t frightened. Often you would be with a man, but you couldn’t be with this one, even though she didn’t know where she was with him. Twice she’d had the money she’d been paid taken back from her when everything was over, the blade of a penknife shown to her, her arm twisted another time.

  The quiet continued, the seated figure at work in no way disturbing it. She slept, though not intending to.

  * * *

  * * *

  Baby angels he thought of them as, and he imagined music, maybe played by them, maybe not. Ten angels there were, and among the shadowy rocks there might have been others, lost now in time or rejected by Giotto’s copyist. Not working for a moment, he examined the postcard and could see no more than the ten either. He tried to remember the name of the woman who’d left the painting in and when he couldn’t he crossed the room to the door and found it: Mrs Sonia Maitland, address and telephone number given, her handwriting, not his. He would finish this picture tomorrow.

  At the sink he washed the cup he had had his tea from. He dried it and dried the saucer. He washed his hands and brushed his teeth. He knelt to pray when he’d undressed and filled a glass of water for the night. His pyjamas were blue, striped with grey. He saw the woman lying there.

  * * *

  * * *

  She woke and he was asleep beside her. A single electric bulb was lit, casting light on the picture of the angels, the darkness around it intense. She didn’t know what time it was.

  She lay there, content; he didn’t stir. There would be money, she thought again, he would be paid for his work. There’d be a hiding place, notes of all denominations. He had no needs: accumulated, untouched, there would be money somewhere, forgotten.

  She went about the room, not waking him, not putting on another light. She opened the cupboard and felt among his folded clothes, in pockets, at the back of each shelf. She opened tins and jars near where he’d made his tea, poked into sugar bags and cartons. She looked among the stacked canvases, lifted down the pictures from the walls, put everything back as tidily as it had been. Even while he slept she felt beneath the mattress. She looked for books, since notes were often kept between the pages. There were no books. She looked for drawers. There were none either. She took a chance and turned another light on in order to examine the floor. One of the boards was loose.

  She extinguished the light she’d put on. With a kitchen knife she lifted the board easily. She propped it open with one of her shoes, then lifted it higher and saw the shadowy outline of something there. She knew at once and reached in for a cardboard box. She took the money, leaving none.

  * * *

  * * *

  Denise drank with Bernie Reilly in Davin’s. She didn’t say about last night, nor did she when Frances came in. ‘Well, Franco, how are you?’ Bernie said, finishing his glassful.

  ‘God, he’s a scut,’ Frances said when he went away.

  ‘Bring Franco a small one,’ Denise called out to the new lad behind the bar. ‘And the same for myself.’

  ‘Jeez, Den!’ Franco exclaimed in mock disapproval of whiskey being drunk so early in the day.

  Denise laughed. She had counted the notes in the Mercer Street toilets. It hadn’t felt like theft and it hadn’t when she knew how much she’d taken. It didn’t now.

  ‘Are you in funds?’ Frances asked her, but Denise didn’t tell her although it would have made a tale all right, a man not laying a finger on her and angels in a picture lit up the whole night long, and the two of them asleep.

  You couldn’t forget it. You couldn’t forget the conversation of the afflicted man, or how he was skilful with the brush and the paint, like a man brought back from the dead as soon as he had them by him. You couldn’t forget the way he knew how to guide the little paintbrush into whatever part of the picture was defective and the colour coming then, how he’d do it without ever a hesitation.

  ‘Wasn’t it quiet last night, though?’ Frances said. ‘I packed it in early.’

  ‘It was quiet all right.’

  He was secure where he was, as if the emptiness around him protected him. You could feel that when you were there, all the time you could feel it. The way things were, she’d gone off in a hurry; she wished she hadn’t. She could have fried him a bit of breakfast, a couple of rashers, whatever he’d have. She could have put out the knives and forks and sat down at the table with him. She’d sworn to God after the first time she went out on the streets that as long as she had breath in her she never would again, that she’d never again stand in the dark of a doorway, not wanting to be seen although being seen was what she was there for. Hours it had felt like when she waited in the half-quay the first time, and hours again before she felt up to walking back to the city streets, her clothes torn where the man she’d gone with had been rough.

  ‘What’s your hurry?’ she said when Frances looked like she was going. ‘Bring Franco another,’ she called out to the new lad.

  ‘Ah, no, Den,’ Frances protested. She was on her feet, shaking her head at the boy, halfway to the door already. ‘See ya, Den.’

  ‘I had it poured,’ the lad said, bringing what he had been asked for, and Denise paid for it.

  No one else came in. She’d go back to the warehouse, Denise said to herself. It came to her suddenly that she would. She’d go back and give him the money he didn’t know he had, or know he had ever possessed. A couple were in a corner, a man and his wife who came in every morning, who nodded at her sometimes but that was all. There was a bell-push beside the black door of the warehouse, a white little bell-push that stood out. You went through the emptiness, then up the ladder that was a stairs. ‘Amn’t I lucky?’ was what he’d said and she could hear his voice echoing.

  * * *

  * * *

  Mr Davin came in, to be rea
dy early for the lunchtime custom. ‘Good morning, Denise,’ he greeted her. ‘How ya doin’?’

  ‘Great,’ she said.

  She’d buy bread and tins in a Quinsworth, she’d pour out Cairns for both of them. He’d be intent on his work and she’d get the board raised and the notes back under it. She’d make the bed if he hadn’t done it, she’d sweep the floor over. ‘Is that board there loose?’ she’d ask and they’d raise it up together. She’d say, ‘What’s that?’ and he’d look at what she was drawing his attention to. He’d reach in for it.

  At the bar Mr Davin measured out another drink for her. She felt a twinge in her leg and sat down to rest it. She would go in when the door was opened for her and they would walk through the emptiness, as they had before. He would show her the picture as if he hadn’t already. He wouldn’t be surprised when she made the bed and swept the floor. He wouldn’t know anything about her because she hadn’t told him.

  * * *

  * * *

  As she often did, Denise slept the afternoon away and woke at five. Still blurred from sleep, she let the day come back to her, and the notion that she’d return the money was the first thing she remembered. She’d been drunk in Davin’s and Mr Davin said go home now. Keale from the barracks came in, the big smirk on his puss when he saw her and she said be careful and Mr Davin came over then. ‘Don’t give her another,’ he instructed the new lad and the way he said it she wanted to show them the money. She had her bag open to take it out but then knew not to.

  She took a spoonful of linctus to settle herself, she drank some water. A headache was beginning, like drumbeats behind her forehead. She lay down, and the notion she’d had in Davin’s came over her again. She saw the angels, and the tip of the brush touching in the colours, and when he finished he came to her, the warmth of his body warming hers. ‘Don’t go from me,’ he said.