William Trevor - Two Lives

But the bottle and the glass were at the back of the safe, where they always were: feeling the need to, Elmer took advantage of their presence. His hands were shaking. If there had been a mirror in the office he’d have noticed that his face had acquired a grey tinge where the blood had drained from it.

He searched the office. He looked in the filing-cabinets and behind them. Glancing down into the shop to confirm that his sisters were there and occupied, he left the office with an eye still fixed on them. He passed soundlessly through the storeroom at the back of the shop and mounted the stairs to the house. He examined the first-floor windows, but could find no evidence of breaking and entering. In the bedroom he shared he searched the drawers of the wardrobe, even looked under the bed in case he had secreted money there due to an error caused by drowsiness. He searched the pockets of his suits.

In the shop – under the pretext that the lock was becoming worn – he examined the entrance doors for any tell-tale signs. In the storeroom he looked everywhere he could think of – behind bales of cloth, at the back of shelves, in the remnant baskets. Sometimes when he was taking a pick-me-up he put the glass down on a surface in the office and later couldn’t quite remember where he’d placed it. He sometimes wandered down to the storeroom to cut off a pattern for re-ordering, and did the same thing. He’d end up having to put the main lights on in order to search for it.

Elmer returned to his office and sat down again at his desk. He tried to remember his movements the night before. He tried to remember if he had or had not poured himself a small one when he returned. No one could have made an entry through the storeroom window because it was barred. He’d had a look at the halldoor on his way from the house: it had not been tampered with.

‘Did you go into the safe?’ he demanded in the shop three-quarters of an hour later. He’d waited until a woman buying knitting wool had gone. He’d had a couple more drinks. ‘Did you open the safe?’

He knew it was most unlikely. One or other of them always put the day’s takings on the desk. He couldn’t remember if they even knew the combination.

‘What?’ Rose demanded, sharpness already in her voice.

‘There’s money gone from the safe.’

Mary Louise spoke to two men with a lorry who were offering to deliver furniture that had been purchased. She gave them the numbers of what she’d bought – the soldiers and the bedroom furniture. The men promised to arrive with the goods the following day.

She rode away, pleased that she had succeeded in securing what she had: she’d been nervous about bidding, but no one else had wanted the soldiers, and the furniture was cheaper than she’d thought it would be. On the outskirts of the town she dismounted at the blue-washed cottage her aunt had mentioned at Letty’s wedding party. She said who she was to a wan-faced woman with a child in her arms.

‘I think my aunt gave you clothes.’

‘God bless her, she did.’

‘Would you rather have the money?’

‘Money? What money’s that?’

‘If I bought the clothes back from you I’d pay for them like they were new.’

The woman, alarmed by this, called her husband. He was a big man, who had to bow his head in order to pass beneath the lintel of the door. Even before he learned the nature of Mary Louise’s request, his wife’s suspicion infected him.

‘The clothing was given to us,’ he said.

‘I know it was. I’m saying I’m willing to buy some of it back. Anything you mightn’t want.’

‘It’s for the boys growing up.’ The woman’s incomprehension made her sound stupid. She lifted the child from one arm to the other when it began to cry.

‘It’s only I thought the money might be useful. It was my cousin that died. I only want a few mementoes.’

The man nodded slowly. An agreement could be reached, he said. He stood to one side, at the same time muttering to his wife. Mary Louise entered the cottage and selected some garments, which the woman wrapped up in newspaper for her. The parcel was tied with the length of string that had made a bundle of the clothes when they were delivered in the first place. The cottage smelt of poverty. Older children stared at Mary Louise from corners and from behind chairs. She left behind more money than had been agreed.

‘You’ll never manage that on the bike,’ the woman warned, and further string was fetched. The parcel was folded in two and tied by the man on to the carrier of the bicycle. It would be secure, he said, if she rode carefully and didn’t let the extra weight sway her.

‘Were you mad?’ Rose’s tone was harsh, disguising excitement.

He didn’t reply. When they got going with their questions they could draw the teeth out of your head. If he hadn’t been so upset he wouldn’t have told them that during the first few weeks of his marriage he’d instructed his bride in the ingenuity of the wall-safe, thinking to amuse her.

‘There she is now,’ Matilda said.

It was twenty to seven; the shop had been closed since six. It stood to reason, Rose and Matilda had declared, not once but several times. She’d gone for ever, they’d said, one of them agreeing with the other. They’d hurried upstairs to see if she’d packed her things and then reported, in disappointment, that apparently she hadn’t. But even so they continued to insist that this time their brother’s unsatisfactory wife had run away.

They stood in the accounting office, Rose and Matilda on either side of the desk, Elmer by the open safe. When they heard the sound in the house all three of them knew that Mary Louise had put away her bicycle in the yard and had entered by the back door. They could tell it was her footfall. Rose called her.

‘I have this to return,’ Mary Louise said when she entered the accounting office. She held out most of the notes that had been in the strong-box. The rest of the money she’d used, she explained.

‘Used?’ Rose repeated. ‘ Used? ’

When he spoke Elmer’s voice was hoarse. He asked his wife where she’d been all day. They’d been beside themselves with worry, he said.

‘I was at my aunt’s auction. I bought a few things.’

Elmer reached out and picked up the notes she had placed on the desk. The rubber band was still around them. Only two of them were missing.

‘You stole money out of the safe,’ Rose said.

Elmer began to protest but the words became a jumble, running into one another incomprehensibly. Mary Louise said:

‘I wouldn’t say stole, Rose.’

‘You stole money out of the safe to go to an auction.’

‘Why didn’t you ask me?’ Elmer’s question was a whisper, just audible in the office.

‘I did, only you were drunk.’

‘My God!’ Rose cried. ‘My God, will you listen to this!’

‘That’s a disgraceful thing to say,’ Matilda interjected. ‘I don’t believe for an instant you asked him.’

‘As a matter of fact, I asked him twice. I asked him the night before last and I asked him last night.’

‘You asked him when you knew – maybe when he was asleep.’

‘I’m not a fool, Matilda. I don’t go round talking to people when they’re asleep.’

‘You go round doing all sorts of things. You go round trying to get people to eat the food left behind on an unwashed plate. You go round locking doors and interfering with property that isn’t yours.’

‘If I were you,’ Rose said to her brother, ‘I’d put the matter in the hands of the Guards. Stealing’s stealing.’

‘The furniture I bought will be coming tomorrow,’ Mary Louise said. ‘It won’t be in anyone’s way.’

With that she left the office. Her footsteps were heard on the stairs a moment later and then in the kitchen, which was partly above the accounting office.