William Trevor - The Collected Stories

Mr Shaughnessy was different. When he stood close to her his breathing would become loud and unsteady. He always moved away quite quickly, when she wasn’t expecting him to. He walked off, never looking back, soundlessly almost.

Then one day, when Mrs Shaughnessy was buying a new skirt and the son was in the shop, he came into the kitchen, where she was scrubbing the draining boards. He came straight to where she was, as if between them there was some understanding that he should do so. He stood in a slightly different position from usual, behind her rather than at her side, and she felt for the first time his hands passing over her clothes.

‘Mr Shaughnessy!’ she whispered. ‘Mr Shaughnessy, now.’

He took no notice. Some part of his face was touching her hair. The rhythm of his breathing changed.

‘Mr Shaughnessy, I don’t like it.’

He seemed not to hear her; she sensed that his eyes were closed. As suddenly, and as quickly as always, he went away.

‘Well, Bob Crowe told me a queer one this evening,’ he said that same evening, while she was placing their plates of fried food in front of them in the dining-room. ‘It seems there’s a woman asleep in Clery’s shop window above in Dublin.’

His wife expressed disbelief. Bob Crowe would tell you anything, she said.

‘In a hypnotic trance, it seems. Advertising Odearest Mattresses.’

‘Ah, go on now! He’s pulling your leg, Des.’

‘Not a bit of him. She’ll stop there a week, it seems. The Guards have to move the crowds on.’

Kathleen closed the dining-room door behind her. He had turned to look at her when he’d said there was a woman asleep in Clery’s window, in an effort to include her in what he was retailing. His eyes had betrayed nothing of their surreptitious relationship, but Kathleen hadn’t been able to meet them.

‘We ploughed the field,’ her father said the following Sunday. ‘I’ve never turned up earth as good.’

She almost told him then. She longed to so much she could hardly prevent herself. She longed to let her tears come and to hear his voice consoling her. When she was a child she’d loved that.

‘You’re a great girl,’ he said.

Mr Shaughnessy took to attending an earlier Mass than his wife and son, and when they were out at theirs he would come into the kitchen. When she hid in her bedroom he followed her there. She’d have locked herself in the outside W.C. if there’d been a latch on the door.

‘Well, Kitty and myself were quiet enough here,’ he’d say in the dining-room later on, when the three of them were eating their midday dinner. She couldn’t understand how he could bring himself to speak like that, or how he could so hungrily eat his food, as though nothing had occurred. She couldn’t understand how he could act normally with his son or with his other children when they came on a visit. It was extraordinary to hear Mrs Shaughnessy humming her songs about the house and calling him by his Christian name.

‘The Kenny girl’s getting married,’ Mrs Shaughnessy said on one of these mealtime occasions. ‘Tyson from the hardware.’

‘I didn’t know she was doing a line with him.’

‘Oh, that’s been going on a long time.’

‘Is it the middle girl? The one with the peroxide?’

‘Enid she’s called.’

‘I wonder Bob Crowe didn’t hear that. There’s not much Bob misses.’

‘I never thought much of Tyson. But, sure, maybe they’re well matched.’

‘Did you hear that, Kitty? Enid Kenny’s getting married. Don’t go taking ideas from her.’ He laughed, and Mrs Shaughnessy laughed, and the son smiled. There wasn’t much chance of that, Kathleen thought. ‘Are you going dancing tonight?’ Mr Crawley often asked her on a Friday, and she would reply that she might, but she never did because it wasn’t easy to go alone. In the shops and at Mass no one displayed any interest in her whatsoever, no one eyed her the way Mary Florence had been eyed, and she supposed it was because her looks weren’t up to much. But they were good enough for Mr Shaughnessy, with his quivering breath and his face in her hair. Bitterly, she dwelt on that; bitterly, she imagined herself turning on him in the dining-room, accusing him to his wife and son.

‘Did you forget to sweep the yard this week?’ Mrs Shaughnessy asked her. ‘Only it’s looking poor.’

She explained that the wind had blown in papers and debris from a knocked-over dustbin. She’d sweep it again, she said.

‘I hate a dirty backyard, Kitty.’

Was this why the other girls had left, she wondered, the girls whom Mrs Shaughnessy had trained, and who’d then gone off? Those girls, whoever they were, would see her, or would know about her. They’d imagine her in one uniform or the other, obedient to him because she enjoyed his attentions. That was how they’d think of her.

‘Leave me alone, sir,’ she said when she saw him approaching her the next time, but he took no notice. She could see him guessing she wouldn’t scream.

‘Please, sir,’ she said. ‘Please, sir. I don’t like it.’

But after a time she ceased to make any protestation and remained as silent as she had been at first. Twelve years or maybe fourteen, she said to herself, lying awake in her bedroom: as long as that, or longer. In her two different uniforms she would continue to be the outward sign of Mrs Shaughnessy’s well-to-do status, and her ordinary looks would continue to attract the attentions of a grey-haired man. Because of the field, the nature of the farm her father had once been barefoot on would change. ‘Kathleen’s field,’ her father would often repeat, and her mother would say again that a bargain was a bargain.

Acknowledgements

These stories first appeared in the following publications: Antaeus, Antioch Review, Atlantic Monthly, Best Irish Stories 2, A Book of Contemporary Nightmares, The Eighth Ghost Book, The Eleventh Ghost Book, Encounter, Good Housekeeping, Grand Street, Harper’s, Irish Ghost Stories, Irish Press, Irish Times, James Joyce and Modern Literature, Listener, Literary Review, London Magazine, New Review, New Yorker, Nova, Observer, Penguin Modern Short Stories, The Real Thing: Seven Stories of Love (The Bodley Head), Redbook, Spectator, The Times, Town, Transatlantic Review, Voices 2 (Michael Joseph), Winter’s Tales (Macmillan, London), Winter’s Tales from Ireland, Woman’s Journal.

‘Going Home’ and ‘Attracta’ first appeared as radio plays on Β Β C Radio Three.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to A T V Music Group for permission to quote from ‘Yesterday’ by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Copyright © Maclen Music, Inc., 1965. ATV Music Corp., 6255 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028, for the USA, Canada, Mexico and the Philippines. Northern Songs Ltd for the rest of the world. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

The Collected StoriesA Meeting in Middle AgeAccess to the ChildrenThe General’s DayMemories of YoughalThe TableA School StoryThe Penthouse ApartmentIn at the BirthThe Introspections of J. P. PowersThe Day We Got Drunk on CakeMiss SmithThe Hotel of the Idle MoonNice Day at SchoolThe Original Sins of Edward TrippThe Forty-seventh SaturdayThe Ballroom of RomanceA Happy FamilyThe Grass WidowsThe Mark-2 WifeAn Evening with John Joe DempseyKinkiesGoing HomeA Choice of ButchersO Fat White WomanRaymond Bamber and Mrs FitchThe Distant FastIn IsfahanAngels at the RitzThe Death of Peggy MeehanMrs SillyA Complicated NatureTeresa’s WeddingOffice RomancesMr McNamaraAfternoon DancingLast WishesMrs Acland’s GhostsAnother ChristmasBroken HomesMatilda’s EnglandTorridgeDeath in JerusalemLovers of Their TimeThe Raising of Elvira TremlettFlights of FancyAttractaA Dream of ButterfliesThe Bedroom Eyes of Mrs VansittartDownstairs at Fitzgerald’sMulvihill’s MemorialBeyond the PaleThe Blue DressThe Teddy-hears’ PicnicThe Time of YearBeing Stolen FromMr TennysonAutumn SunshineSunday DrinksThe Paradise LoungeMagsThe News from IrelandOn the ZattereThe Wedding in the GardenLunch in WinterThe Property of Colette NerviRunning AwayCocktails at Doney’sHer Mother’s DaughterBodily SecretsTwo More GallantsThe Smoke Trees of San PietroVirginsMusicEvents at DrimaghleenFamily SinsA TrinityThe Third PartyHoneymoon in TramoreThe PrintmakerIn Love with AriadneA Husband’s ReturnCoffee with OliverAugust SaturdayChildren of the HeadmasterKathleen’s Field