William Trevor - Two Lives

‘Mary Louise! Come here, Mary Louise!’ Small Sadie beckons, and questions when she is obeyed: ‘Will you go back to the graveyard, Mary Louise? Will you get up to your tricks?’ Laughter cackles from the tiny woman’s throat. In the house she is often likened to a hen because of that noise she makes.

‘What tricks are those, Sadie?’

But Sadie only shakes her head. At night she is locked away alone. She broke a gardener’s arm one time. She’s in the house because too often she believes she has to break things and tear off wallpaper. A week ago she was told she would remain in care for a while yet.

‘Sadie’s the lucky one!’ she cries in the same shrill way. ‘Poor old eejits, what good is it to you? What good the Holy Apostolic Church? What good the dogs in the traps? Dog eats dog, Thundering Joe and Flashby. Tinned with rabbit.’

‘Oh, hold your damn noise,’ a woman snaps.

12

He brought binoculars in case the heron was about. The soldiers had been his father’s, he said. There were just those she’d seen, French and German: the battles he could reconstruct were limited.

‘You’ve heard about the watch?’ He lifted it from his jacket pocket. They were standing on the shallow bank of the stream he’d spoken of. If Mary Louise kept watching she’d see tiny trout swimming by.

‘It’s a pretty watch.’ She had admired it without saying anything when she’d first noticed him snapping it open. It was slender, golden, its case engraved, the chain finer than was usual.

‘My father, you know.’ He laughed. ‘You have heard, haven’t you?’

‘People tell a story.’

‘It’s true. If he had remembered the soldiers were still in the house he’d have tried to sell them too. I wish I’d known him.’

He explained that at the time when he’d ceased to come to school it hadn’t been because he was weaker than usual, but because his mother couldn’t any longer spare the time to drive there and back twice a day. She couldn’t afford help in the vegetable garden they made their living from: every hour was precious.

‘She taught me in the evenings. Not that I know much.’

‘Actually, you seem to know a lot.’

‘Certain subjects we didn’t bother with at all. I can hardly count, for instance.’ He lifted the binoculars from around his neck and handed them to her. She focused them and searched the undergrowth, upstream and down. He took them from her, then shook his head.

‘We’re out of luck today.’

But at least they saw the trout going by, a couple at a time. You could catch them with a net, he said.

‘Poor little things. I wouldn’t want to.’

He laughed. He pushed the shock of hair back from his forehead, which was his most familiar gesture. The smaller the trout were, he said, the better they tasted. Then he said:

‘They’re an intimidating pair, aren’t they, your husband’s sisters?’

‘A bit, I suppose.’

‘You live in the same house as them?’

‘Oh, yes. Above the shop.’

‘I’m not so sure I’d entirely care for that.’

They walked back the way they’d come. He said:

‘At your wedding my mother and I were in the second pew. I kept wondering what you’d look like. You passed up the aisle with your father but I only saw your back.’

‘I turned round when the whole thing was over.’

‘You were Mrs Quarry then.’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘I hadn’t seen you before that for ages.’ He paused. ‘Actually, you were beautiful that day. If you want to know, that’s what I thought.’

The flush came into her face. She looked away.

‘To tell you the truth, I’ve always thought you were a beauty.’

‘A beauty! Oh, go away with you, Robert!’

‘I always thought that,’ he repeated evenly.

He didn’t look at her; he wasn’t watching her, as he had on the previous Sunday. He stooped to pick a dandelion.

‘But I’m not in the least –’

‘You are, Mary Louise.’

She wanted him to go on, to say it again, to go into detail. But about to speak, he hesitated and then was silent.

‘I’m not beautiful in the least.’

‘Doesn’t Elmer Quarry think you are?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ask him and he’ll tell you. Of course he does.’

They were not walking in the direction of the house any more. He had veered off to the left, crossing the slope of a field.

‘Do you ever read Russian novels?’ he suddenly asked, disappointing her with this change of subject.

She shook her head.

‘I have a favourite Russian novelist,’ he said.

He continued on the subject as they walked. He spoke of people with difficult Russian names. He described a man with a long thin face and a tapering, flat-topped nose.

‘Where’re we going?’

‘There’s a graveyard. A most peculiar place.’

He related the plot of a story, so meticulously describing a hero and a heroine that they formed in her mind, their features like features seen on the screen of the Electric, a little more shadowy at first, but then acquiring clarity.

‘I used to think once,’ he confessed, ‘that I might try to write stuff like that.’

‘And did you try?’

‘I wasn’t any good at it.’

‘Oh, I’m sure –’

‘No, I wasn’t any good at it.’

They reached the graveyard, by the side of a lane that appeared to be no longer used. Its small iron gate could not be moved, he said, but the wall was not difficult to clamber over. He took her hand to help her.

‘I’d love to be buried here,’ he said. ‘It isn’t full but no one bothers with it now.’

It was hot among the headstones. The grass was long between the graves, like hay waiting to be cut even though it was spring.

‘A secret place,’ he said.

‘Yes, it is.’

Stunted thorn trees bounded it within its stone wall. If ever there had been paths they were no longer to be discerned. Some headstones lurched crookedly; those flat upon the graves had mostly sunk at one end.

‘I love it here,’ he said.

They sat down on the long grass, leaning against a headstone that recorded a death in the Attridge family. Other Attridges were all around them, other branches of the family, other generations. James Attridge, born 1742, died September 1803, Safe Now in Heavenly Love. Percival Attridge, 1769–1828. Charlotte Jane Attridge, died 1840, aged one year. Susan Emily, wife of Charles. Safe Now in Heaven’s Arms. Peace, Perfect Peace.

‘It’s funny there isn’t a church,’ Mary Louise said.

‘It’s half a mile away. Derelict now.’

‘They’re Protestants buried here, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, they’re Protestants.’

‘A pity about the church.’

‘There’s a rosebush growing all over it. In and out of the windows. June’s the time to see that little church.’

‘I’d like to see it.’

‘I’ll show you some time. And the heron’s really there too, you know. I didn’t make the heron up.’

‘I didn’t think you made the heron up. Why would you do that?’

‘To make you come back.’

She wanted to say she’d thought her ignorance about the things he liked would bore him, but she couldn’t find the courage. She traced a pattern on her pale green skirt with the tip of a forefinger. Her legs were tucked beneath her. The stone was warm on her back.

‘I’d have come back anyway.’

‘When I had to be taken away from Miss Mullover’s because there wasn’t time to drive me I wanted to try cycling. I did one day, but it didn’t work.’ He smiled. He was wearing the same corduroy trousers and the same tweed jacket he’d been wearing last week. His tie was tweed also, quite colourful, greens and reds. ‘I tried to arrange to go in with the milk lorry, but that didn’t work either because it went some roundabout way, and I wouldn’t have been able to get home again.’