William Trevor - The Hill Bachelors

‘I knew of course that it was there.’ He speaks to the air, as he always does, addressing no one. ‘The funeral two months ago, disposal of the library on the eighth. They’d no idea. All that stuff and they’d no idea. I had the pickings to myself.’

He doesn’t take his overcoat off. He has a way of sometimes not doing that. He sits down, still talking, saying he spent the night before in the temperance hotel of the town he visited, the only hotel there was. He and a local bookseller were the only dealers, and all the bookseller wanted was the Hardy. Sluggish on the sofa, Michingthorpe polishes his glasses and carefully replaces them as he speaks.

‘Frightful journey. Change twice and a tree down on the line at Immington. Of course I had the Grossmith stuff to annotate.’

Pouring drinks, James nods. His fair hair has gone nondescript and is receding; in fawn corduroy trousers, checked winter shirt, fawn pullover, he is a little stooped.

‘Clione’s birthday,’ he says, offering Michingthorpe a Kir.

But nothing that is outside himself, or part of other people, ever influences Michingthorpe. His surface runs deep, for greater knowledge of him offers nothing more than what initially it presents. Roaming the Internet is his hobby, he sometimes says.

Still feeling a little woozy from the wine at lunchtime, Clione shakes her head at the offer of a drink and tidies the room instead. Michingthorpe says he has formed the opinion that Conrad conducted a correspondence with a woman called Rosa Hoogwerf.

‘Then residing in Argentina, though why remains a mystery. I’ve floated the name on the Net.’

Clione wonders if he noticed that she has carried a yellow coffee-maker across the room, or registers that she is now gathering up the remains of cardboard packages from the floor. She clears away the birthday cards from the mantelpiece.

‘Some woman in Hungary,’ Michingthorpe is saying. ‘By the sound of her, Rosa Hoogwerf’s granddaughter.’

He has accepted the drink that has been poured for him, and Clione wonders why he is here, then realizes it is to tell about the journey he has made and the prize that has come his way. Someone who once visited his flat saw the refrigerator open, with only a single bottle of milk in it, and uncooked sausages on a plate and butter still in its foil. Michingthorpe is unmarried, has apparently never had with anyone — man or woman — what could be called a relationship. That is generally assumed, but assumed with confidence, and is not contradicted by the known facts.

Clione sits down again. The conversation dims to a grey murmur she doesn’t listen to. She doesn’t dislike Michingthorpe, she never has; he isn’t an enemy of any kind. Sometimes she considers he isn’t even a bore, simply a presence with small slate eyes and teenager’s hair that has a biblical look. She isn’t aware of how she knows he loves her.

‘Not that I feel my age,’ she suddenly hears now, and wonders if he has finally acknowledged that there has been a birthday in the house and has said when his is, in August, as he has said before. ‘Miskolc is where that woman is. She has a little English.’

He has never, that Clione can remember, met her eye, for he doesn’t go in for that with anyone; yet still she knows. For several years — and before, for she senses that it has been longer — there has been something that even now seems extraordinary: it is incredible that Michingthorpe can love anyone; incredible too that he can be mysterious. Burning the cardboard she has collected, continuing not to listen to what is said, she wonders yet again if he is aware that she senses his attachment.

‘We can sell the house at last.’

She hears James passing this information on and looks to see the vagueness it inspires in Michingthorpe’s plump features, as happens when something utterly without interest requires his attention.

‘We’ve found an oast-house,’ she says herself.

There is a different reaction now. For the first time in Clione’s entire acquaintance with him, Michingthorpe allows his mouth to open in what appears to be shock. Nor does it close. His small eyes stare harshly at the air. He sits completely still, one hand grasping the other, both pressed into his chest.

‘This is the country?’

‘Well, yes. Sussex.’

There is a pause, and then recovery. Michingthorpe stands up. ‘Originally my family came from Sussex. But a long time ago. Michingthorpe Ales.’

‘We shall miss you.’ Clione notices herself sounding as mischievous as one of her children. There is no protestation that they’ll be missed themselves. For a long moment their empty-handed visitor is silent. But before he goes there’s more about the Internet.

*

Pouring coffee at breakfast five days later, Clione waits to hear the content of an early-morning telephone call: only Michingthorpe gets in touch at five to eight. It has occasionally been earlier.

‘He has been to see it.’

‘What? Seen what?’

‘The oast-house. He’s been down there. Well, he was near, I think. Anyway, he has looked it over.’

‘But why on earth?’

‘It’s decidedly unlike him, but even so he has. I think I told him where it was. Not that he asked.’

‘You mean, he went along and bothered those people for no reason?’

‘He just said he’d looked it over.’

A flicker of unease disturbs Clione. It might have amused her if ever she had confessed that Michingthorpe has feelings for her; but to have confessed as well that he has never displayed them, that her woman’s intuition comes in here, would have led too easily on to a territory of embarrassment. Could it all not be imagination on her part? Or put more cruelly, a fading beauty’s yearning for attention? ‘Oh, but surely,’ Clione has heard James’s objection, the amusement all his now. Better just to leave it, she has always considered.

‘He knows our offer has been accepted?’

‘Oh, yes, he knows.’

Two days later, in the early afternoon, they visit again the house they have bought, received there by an elderly man — a Mr Witheridge whom they have not met before, whose daughter and son-in-law showed them around. They are permitted to take measurements, and in whispers speak of structural changes they hope to make.

‘Nice that your friend liked it too,’ the old man says, waiting downstairs with teacups on a tray when they have finished.

Profuse apologies are offered, and explanations that sound lame. Some silly muddle, James vaguely mutters.

‘Oh, good heavens, no! Oast-houses are in Mr Michingthorpe’s family, it seems. Michingthorpe Ales, he mentioned.’

The garden is little more than a field with a few shrubs in it. The present occupants came in 1961; Mr Witheridge moved in when his wife died. All this is talked about over cups of tea, and how mahonias do well, and winter heathers. But there are no heathers, of any season, that Clione and James can see, and herbs have failed in brick-edged beds in the cobbled yard.

‘Martins nest every year but they aren’t a nuisance,’ the old man assures them. ‘I’d stay here for ever, actually.’ He nods, then shrugs away his wish. ‘But we need to be nearer to things. Not that we’re entirely cut off. No, I don’t want to go at all.’

‘We’re sorry to take it from you.’ James smiles, again apologetic.

‘Oh, good heavens, no! It’s just that it’s a happy place and we want you to be happy here, too. There’s a bus that goes by regularly at the bottom of the lane. I explained that to your friend when he said he didn’t drive.’

‘Yes, I dare say he’ll visit us.’ Clione laughs, but doubts — and notices James doubting it too — that Michingthorpe often will, not being the country kind. The long acquaintanceship seems already over, the geography of their lives no longer able to contain it.