William Trevor - Selected Stories

‘You’d take to Oscarey,’ Hester said.

Before Bartholomew and his sister made their lives at Oscarey, there was an inevitability about the course of events. In private, Bartholomew did not think about what was happening in terms of Hester, considering rather that this was what had been ordained for him, that Hester’s ordering of the circumstances was part of that. Fifteen years ago, when Sally Carbery had decided against marriage at the last minute it was because she feared Hester. She had been vague when suddenly she was doubtful, and was less truthful than she might have been. Unaware of that at the time, Bartholomew was bewildered; later he came to believe that in influencing Sally Carbery’s second thoughts Hester had, then too, been assigned a role in the pattern conceived by a greater wisdom. ‘Silly’, Hester’s word for Sally Carbery had been, even before Sally Carbery and Bartholomew loved one another.

The Church approved the rescuing of Oscarey; and it was anticipated, as Mr Flewett had surmised, that when old Canon Furney died the benefice of Clonbyre, Nead and Oscarey would become one again, that the unnecessarily spacious, draughty rectory in poor repair at Clonbyre would be abandoned in favour of a smaller, more comfortable one at Oscarey. This came about, and the manner in which human existence – seeming to be shaped by the vagaries of time and chance but in fact obedient to a will – became the subject of more than one of Bartholomew’s sermons. Verses of the scriptures were called upon to lend credence to his conclusions, which more than anything else claimed that the mysterious would never be less than mysterious, would always be there, at the heart of spiritual life. That the physical presence of things, and of words and people, amounted to very little made perfect sense to Bartholomew.

It did to Hester too. Belief was part of Hester, taken for granted, a sturdy certainty that brought her confidence and allowed her to insist she must be taken as she was, allowed her to condemn as a dishonesty any concealment of personal traits. When her brother’s fourteen parishioners at Oscarey, and the twenty-seven at Clonbyre and the eleven at Nead, came to know her there was agreement – as elsewhere there had often been before – that she and Bartholomew were far from alike. None among the parishioners feared Hester as Sally Carbery had, since none possessed a fiancée’s intuition, only strangers’ perspicacity. Sally Carbery’s fear – to do with the prospect of the future, of being more closely involved with Hester – was understandable. At Oscarey, and Clonbyre and Nead, there was only Hester as she was, a talking-point because of it.

As the two aged, the understanding between them that had survived the cramped conditions of Maunder Street was supported by reminiscence - the smell of fresh bread every early morning, the unexpected death of their mother, their father’s mercilessly slow, the two cremations at Glasnevin. Seaside photographs taken at Rush and Bettystown were in an album, visits to both grandmothers and to aunts were remembered; and hearing other generations talked about were. The present was kept a little at bay: that congregations everywhere continued to dwindle, that no ground had been regained by the Church or seemed likely to be, was not often mentioned. Hester was indifferent to this. Bartholomew was increasingly a prey to melancholy, but did not let it show, to Hester or to anyone.

For her part, Hester had given herself the task of restoring Oscarey Church, scraping the tiled floor, washing the altarcloths, polishing the neglected pews and brass. The church was hers, she considered, for she had found it and brought life to it, making more of it than a mere outward and visible sign. It was not her way to say that all was well, that because of her work everything was good: there was a presumption in that she didn’t care for, and such sentiments cloyed. But as she knelt before her brother at the altar-rails, while he raised the cup or again wiped clean its rim, she knew that all this was meant to be: he was here, where he should be, and so should she, where her unyielding spirit had brought them. ‘The peace of God,’ he ended each occasion of worship, and gave his blessing. The words were special. And her brother saying them in the hush while Hester still knelt among the few who came to Oscarey Church, before the shuffling and the whispering began, was special too.

Except at weddings and the christenings that sometimes followed them there were no young among the congregations of the three churches, and with nostalgia Bartholomew now and again remembered Youth Reach and Youth Action and the Saturday rambles to Kilmashogue and Two Rock. On Sundays when he looked down from the pulpit at aged faces, at tired eyes, heads turned to hear him better, and when his hand was afterwards shaken at the door, he sensed the hope that had flickered into life during the service: in all that was promised, in psalm and gospel, in his own interpretations, the end was not an end.

Then – as it happened, on a Sunday night – Bartholomew, with cruel suddenness, was aware of a realization that made him feel as if he had been struck a blow so powerful it left him, though not in pain, without the normality of his faculties. This happened in his bedroom before he had begun to undress. The bedside light was on; he had closed the door, pulled down the two blinds, and was standing beside his bed, having just untied the laces of his shoes. For a moment he thought he had fallen down, but he had not. He thought he could not see, but he could see. A shoe was in one hand, which brought something of reality back, and sitting down on the edge of the bed did too. The clatter of the shoe on the linoleum when it slipped from his grasp brought more. Sensations of confusion lingered while he sat there, then were gone.

‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, As it is in heaven . . .’

His own voice made no sense, and yet went on.

Afterwards, Bartholomew told himself that what had occurred must surely be no more than a mood of petulance, an eruption from his half-stifled impatience with the embroidery and frills that dressed the simplicity of truth with invasive, sentimental stories that somehow made faith easier, the hymns he hated. For Bartholomew, the mystery that was the source of all spiritual belief, present through catastrophe and plague and evil, was a strength now too, and more than it had ever been. Yet there was disquiet, a stirring in his vocation he had brought upon himself and wished he had not. Seeking guidance, he dwelt on his memories of the euphoria he had been aware of when his profession had first seemed to be chosen for him. There were no reservations then, and he searched for what it was, in himself, that had allowed his unquestioning credence. But no help came from that far-off time, and Bartholomew – not knowing what he should otherwise do – continued to visit the lonely and the sick, to repeat the Te Deum , the Creed, the Litany. He felt he should not and yet he did.

Hester noticed no change in her brother, and he had told her nothing. Her own fulfilment, through him, continued, her belief undiminished, her certainties unchallenged. In her daily life all she distrusted she still distrusted. Her eye was cold, her scorn a nourishment; and then, for Hester too when more time passed, there was adversity. She did not complain. ‘Oh, we all must die,’ she said when she learned that she was to herself, sooner than she had ever expected. A doctor whom she had hardly bothered since coming to Oscarey confirmed his first suspicions, gently taking from her the small hope he had permitted to remain since her previous visit. He told her what she had to know, and she said nothing. Afterwards, alone, she did not weep; nor did she prepare her brother for what awaited both of them. But one morning, when the remains of spring and all of summer had gone, when they were sitting in warm September sunshine in their small garden, she told him. Hester was not yet sixty then.