The Collected Stories

by William Trevor

  The story is famous in the town, the only story of its kind the town possesses. It is told as a mystery, and the strangers who hear it sometimes visit the Protestant church to look up at the tablet that commemorates a death in 1873. They leave the church in bewilderment, wondering why an uneasy spirit should have lighted on a boy so many years later. They never guess, not one of them, that the story as it happened wasn’t a mystery in the least.

  Flights of Fancy

  In her middle age Sarah Machaen had developed the habit of nostalgically slipping back into her childhood. Often, on a bus or at a dinner party, she would find herself caught in a mesh of voices and events that had been real forty years ago. There were summer days in the garden of her father’s rectory, her brothers building another tree-house, her father asleep in a brown-and-orange-striped deck-chair. In the cool untidy kitchen she helped her mother to make strawberry cake; she walked with the old spaniel, Dodge, to Mrs Rolleston’s Post Office and Stores in the village, her shoes dusty as soon as she took a single step. On wet winter afternoons, cosy by the fire in the drawing-room, the family played consequences or card games, or listened to the wireless. The war brought black-out curtains and rationing, and two evacuees.

  At forty-seven Sarah Machaen was reconciled to the fact that her plainness wasn’t going to go away. As a child she had believed that growing up would put paid to the face she couldn’t care for, that it would develop prettily in girlhood, as the ugly duckling had developed. ‘Oh, it’s quite common,’ she heard a woman say to her mother. ‘Many a beauty was as plain as a pikestaff to begin with.’ But no beauty dawned in Sarah’s face.

  Her older brother became a clergyman like their father, her younger one an engineer. She herself, in 1955, found employment she enjoyed in the firm of Pollock-Brown Lighting; She became secretary to Mr Everend, who at that time was assistant to the director in charge of publicity, whom he subsequently succeeded. The office was a busy one, and although Sarah had earlier had ambitions to work in the more cultural ambience of a museum or a publishing house she soon found herself taking a genuine interest in Pollock-Brown’s range of well-designed products: light fittings that were increasingly specified by architects of taste all over Britain and Europe. The leaflets that passed through the Pollock-Brown publicity department constantly drew attention to the quality and the elegance that placed Pollock-Brown ahead of the field; the photographs in trade advertisements made many of the Pollock-Brown fitments seem like works of art. Sarah could discover no reason to argue with these claims, and was content to let Pollock-Brown become her daytime world, as a museum or a publishing house might have been. Her status in the organization rose Flights of Fancy with the status of Mr Everend, who often stated that he wished to be served by no other secretary. The offices of the firm were in London, a large block of glass and concrete in Kingsway. Twenty miles away, in factories just beyond the Green Belt, the manufacture of the well-designed fitments took place.

  Since 1960 Sarah had had a flat in Tufnell Park, which was quite convenient, the Northern line all the way to Tottenham Court Road, the Central on to Holborn. The brother who was a clergyman lived in Harrogate and did not often come to London; the one who was an engineer had spent his life building dams in Africa and returned to England only with reluctance. Sarah’s parents, happily married for almost fifty years, had died within a month of one another in 1972, sharing a room in an old-persons’ home that catered exclusively for the clergy and their wives.

  But even so Sarah was not alone. She had many friends, made in Pollock-Brown and through the Bach choir in which she sang, and some that dated back to her schooldays. She was a popular choice as a godmother. She was invited to parties and went regularly to the theatre or to concerts, often with her friend Anne, whose marriage had failed six years ago. She lived on her own in the flat in Tufnell Park now: when first she’d lived there she’d shared it with a girl called Elizabeth, with whom she’d been at school. Elizabeth, a librarian, was bespectacled and rather fat, a chatterbox and a compulsive nibbler. She hadn’t been all that easy to live with but Sarah knew her well and appreciated her kindness and her warmth. It had astonished her when Elizabeth began to go out with a man she’d met in her library, a man whom she later became engaged to. It seemed to Sarah that Elizabeth wasn’t the kind of girl who became engaged, any more than she herself was, yet in the end Elizabeth married and went to live in Cricklewood, where she reared a family. Sarah took in another girl but this time the arrangement didn’t work because the new girl, a stranger to Sarah, kept having men in her bedroom. Sarah asked her to go, and did not attempt to replace her.

  Almost every weekend she made the journey to Cricklewood to see Elizabeth and her family. The children loved her and often said so. Elizabeth’s husband enjoyed chatting to her, drinking gin and tonic, to which Sarah had become mildly addicted. It was a home-from-home, and it wasn’t the only one. No husband disliked Sarah. No one found her a bore. She brought small presents when she visited. She struck the right note and fitted in.

  Now and again these friends attempted to bring Sarah into contact with suitable men, but nothing ever came of such efforts. There’d been, while she was still at the secretarial college she’d attended, a man called George, who had taken her out, who had embraced her and had once, in his bed-sitting-room, begun to undress her. She had enjoyed these attentions even though their perpetrator was not a person she greatly cared for. She had been quite prepared to permit him to take her clothes off and then to proceed in whatever way he wished, but he had suddenly appeared to change his mind, to lose interest or to develop nerves, it wasn’t clear which. She’d felt quite sick and shaky, sitting on his lap in an armchair, while his fingers fell away from the buttons he’d been undoing. Awkwardly she had nuzzled her nose into his neck, hoping this would induce him to continue, but his arms, which hung down on either side of the armchair, had remained where they were. A moment later he’d clambered to his feet and had filled a kettle for tea. As an experience, it was one that Sarah was destined never to forget. She recalled it often as she lay alone in bed at night, extending her companion’s desire and sometimes changing his identity before she did so. In middle age his bed-sitting-room was still as vivid as it had ever been, and she could still recall the feel of the blood draining away from her face and the sickness that developed when he seemed suddenly to reject her.

  Sarah was not obsessed by this and she made efforts not to dwell on it, but it often struck her that it was unfair that she should be deprived of a side of life which was clearly pleasant. There was an assumption that girls without much in the way of looks didn’t possess the kind of desire that looks appeared to indicate, but this of course was not true. When politely dancing with men or even when just talking to them she had more than once experienced what privately she designated as a longing to be loved by them. Her expression on these occasions did not ever betray her, and her plainness trailed a modesty that prevented her from ever being forward. She learnt to live with her frustrations, wondering as she grew older if some elderly widower, no longer moved by physical desire but seeking only an agreeable companion, might not one day propose marriage to her. She might accept, she vaguely thought. She wasn’t at all sure what it would be like being married to an elderly widower, but some instinct informed her that she’d prefer it to being on her own in the flat in Tufnell Park all through her middle age. Alone at night her thoughts went further, creating the widower as a blind man who could not even sense her plainness, whose fingers caressing her face felt a beauty that was not there. Other scenes took place in which the widower ended by finding a vigour he thought he’d lost. It often astonished her in the daytime that she had imagined this.

  On the other hand, her friend Anne, the one whose marriage had failed, lived a rackety life with men and sometimes said she envied Sarah the quietness of hers. Now and again, having dinner together after a visit to the theatre or a concert, Anne would refer to the lovers she’d had, castigating most of them a
s selfish. ‘How right you are,’ she had a way of saying, ‘to steer clear of all that.’ Sarah always laughed when Anne said that, pointing out that it hadn’t been her choice. ‘Oh, choice or not, by God you’re better off,’ Anne would insist. ‘I really swear.’ Then Anne met a Canadian, who married her and took her off to Montreal.

  That was another person to miss, as she had missed the people of her childhood and her friend Elizabeth – for it naturally wasn’t the same after Elizabeth married. She had often thought of telling Anne about her longing for a relationship with a man, but shyness had always held her back. The shyness had to do with not knowing enough, with having so little experience, the very opposite of Anne. Yet once, when they’d both had quite a lot of wine to drink, she’d almost asked her what she should do. ‘Just because I’m so wretchedly plain,’ she’d almost said, ‘doesn’t mean I can do without things.’ But she hadn’t said that, and now Anne was gone and there was no one else who wouldn’t have been just a little shocked to hear stuff like that. Not in a million years could she have said it to Elizabeth.

  And so it remained. No widower, elderly or otherwise, proposed marriage; no blind man proclaimed love. What happened was rather different from all that. Once a year, as Christmas approached, Pollock-Brown held its annual staff party at the factories beyond the Green Belt. Executive and clerical staff from the building in Kingsway met the factory workers in their huge canteen, richly decorated now with Christmas hangings. Dancing took place. There was supper, and unlimited drinks at the firm’s expense. The managing director made a speech and the present chairman, Sir Robert Willis, made a speech also, in the course of which he thanked his workers for their loyalty. A thousand Pollock-Brown employees let their hair down, typists and secretaries, directors, executives who would soon be directors, tea-women, mould-makers, van-drivers, lorry-drivers, warehousemen, finishers, polishers. In a formal manner Mr Everend always reserved the first dance for Sarah and she felt quite proud to be led on to the floor in the wake of Sir Robert and his secretary and the managing director and his secretary, a woman called Mrs Mykers. After that the Christmas spirit really got going. Paper hats were supplied to everyone, including Sir Robert Willis, Mr Everend and the managing director. One of the dispatch boys had once poured a little beer over Mr Everend, because Mr Everend always so entered into the spirit of things that horseplay with beer seemed quite in order. There were tales, many of them true, of sexual congress in out-of-the-way corners, particularly in store-rooms.

  ‘Hullo,’ a girl said, addressing Sarah in what for this one evening of the year was called the Ladies’ Powder Room. Female Staff a painted sign more ordinarily stated, hidden now beneath the festive card that bore the grander title.

  ‘Hullo,’ Sarah replied, unable to place the girl. She was small, with short black hair that was smooth and hung severely straight on either side of her face. She was pretty: an oval face with eyes almost as black as her hair, and a mouth that slightly pouted, dimpling her cheeks. Sarah frowned as the dimples came and went. The girl smiled in a friendly way. She said her name was Sandra Pond.

  ‘You’re Everend’s girl,’ she added.

  ‘Secretary,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I meant that.’ She laughed and the dimples danced about. ‘I didn’t mean nothing suspect, Miss Machaen.’

  ‘Suspect?’

  ‘You know.’

  She wore a black dress with lace at her neck and wrists Her feet were neat, in shiny black shoes. Her legs were slim, black-clad also. How nice to be so attractive! Sarah thought, a familiar reflection when meeting such girls for the first time. It wouldn’t even matter having a slack, lower-class accent, as this girl had. You’d give up a lot for looks like that.

  ‘I’m in polishing,’ the girl said. ‘Your plastic lampshades.’

  ‘You don’t sound as if you like it.’ Sarah laughed. She glanced at herself in the mirror above one of the two wash-basins. Hurriedly she looked away.

  ‘It’s clean,’ Sandra Pond said. ‘A polishing machine’s quite clean to operate.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it would be.’

  ‘Care for a drink at all, Miss Machaen?’

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘Don’t you drink, Miss Machaen?’

  ‘Well, yes, but –’

  ‘We’re meant to mix at a thing like this. The peasants and the privileged.’ She gave a rasping, rather unattractive laugh. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  Beneath the prettiness there was something hard about her. There were flashes of bitterness in the way she’d said ‘the peasants and the privileged’, and in the way she’d laughed and in the way she walked out of the Ladies’ Powder Room. She walked impatiently, as if she disliked being at the Christmas party. She was a prickly girl, Sarah said to herself. She wasn’t at all glad that she’d fallen into conversation with her.

  They sat down at a small table at the edge of the dance-floor. ‘What d’you drink?’ the girl said, immediately getting to her feet again in an edgy way. ‘Whisky?’

  ‘I’d like a gin and tonic.’

  The dimples came and went, cracking the brittleness. The smile seemed disposed to linger but did not. ‘Don’t go away now,’ the slack voice commanded as she jerked quickly away herself.

  ‘Someone looking after you?’ Dancing with the wife of the dispatch manager, Mr Everend shouted jollily at Sarah. He wore a scarlet, cone-shaped paper hat. The wife of the dispatch manager was eyeing, over his shoulder, a sales executive called Chumm, with whom, whenever it was possible, she went to bed.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Mr Everend,’ Sarah answered, waving a hand to indicate that he mustn’t feel responsible for her.

  ‘Horrid brute, that man,’ Sandra Pond said, returning with their drinks. ‘Cheers,’ she said, raising a glass of what looked like whisky and touching Sarah’s glass with it.

  ‘Cheers,’ Sarah said, although it was a salutation she disliked.

  ‘It began last year here,’ Sandra said, pointing with her glass at the dispatch manager’s wife. ‘Her and Chumm.’

  ‘I’ve never met her actually.’

  ‘You didn’t miss nothing. That Chumm’s a villain.’

  ‘He has that reputation.’

  ‘He screwed her in a store-room. I walked in on top of them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh in-bloody-deed.’ She laughed. ‘You like gin and t, d’you? Your drink, Miss Machaen?’

  ‘Please call me Sarah. Yes, I like it.’

  ‘Whisky mac this is. I love booze. You like it, Sarah?’

  ‘Yes, I do rather.’

  ‘Birds of a feather.’ She laughed, and paused. ‘I seen you last year. Dancing with Everend and that. I noticed you.’

  ‘I’ve been coming for a long time.’

  ‘How long you been at P-B, then?’

  ‘Since 1960.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I was only a nipper in 1960. What age’d you say I was, Sarah?’

  ‘Twenty-five?’

  ‘Thirty. Don’t look it, do I?’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  ‘You live alone, do you, Sarah?’

  ‘Yes, I do. In Tufnell Park.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘It is quite nice.’

  Sandra Pond nodded repeatedly. Tufnell Park was very nice indeed, she said, extremely nice.

  ‘You sit there, Sarah,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get you another drink.’

  ‘Oh, no. Let me. Please.’ She began to get to her feet, but Sandra Pond shot out a hand, a movement like a whip’s, instantly restraining her. Her small fingers pressed into the flesh of Sarah’s arm. ‘Stay right where you are,’ she said.

  An extraordinary thought occurred to Sarah as she watched the girl moving rapidly away with their two empty glasses: Sandra Pond wanted to share her flat.

  ‘Now, now, now,’ Mr Priddy from Accounts admonished, large and perspiring, staring down at her through thick spectacles. He reached for her, seemingly unaware of her
protestations. His knees pressed into hers, forcing them into waltztime.

  ‘They do an awful lot of good, these things,’ Mr Priddy confidently remarked. ‘People really get a chance.’ He added something else, something about people getting a chance to chew the rag. Sarah nodded. ‘We’ve had a miracle of a year,’ Mr Priddy said. ‘In spite of everything.’

  She could see Sandra Pond standing with two full glasses, looking furious. She tried to smile at her through the dancing couples, to make some indication with her eyes that she’d had no option about dancing with Mr Priddy. But Sandra Pond, glaring into the dancers, hadn’t even noticed her yet.

  ‘Mrs Priddy couldn’t come,’ Mr Priddy told her. ‘Tummy trouble.’

  She said she was sorry, trying to remember what Mrs Priddy looked like and failing in that.

  ‘She gets it,’ Mr Priddy said.

  Sandra Pond had seen them and was looking aggrieved now, her head on one side. She sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. She crossed her thin legs.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Sarah said, and Mr Priddy smiled graciously and went away to do his duty by some other lone woman.

  ‘Can’t stand him,’ Sandra Pond said. ‘Clammy blooming hands.’

  Sarah drank some gin and tonic. ‘I say, you know,’ a man called out, ‘it’s a hell of a party, eh?’

  He wasn’t sober. He swayed, with a glass in one hand, peering down at them. He was in charge of some department or other, Sarah couldn’t remember which. He spent a great deal of time in a pub near the Kingsway building, not going home until the last minute. He lived with a sister, someone had once told her.

  ‘Hey, who’s she?’ he demanded, wagging his glass at Sandra. ‘Who’s this one, Sarah?’