William Trevor - Death in Summer

One day, arriving as usual on a morning there was to be a visit to the minimarket, Albert was taken aback when his ringing of the doorbell remained unanswered. A neighbour was attracted by his worry as he stood there, and then another neighbour. Something was wrong, they said, and there was excitement when drama was anticipated. A small crowd gathered, a police car arrived, and already the man who did not open his door was spoken of in the past tense. Forcible entry was made; inside, the television screen flickered, an American domestic comedy in progress. Slumped low in his outsize armchair, eyes still and glassy, the man Albert had looked after was no longer alive.

Five days later, at the funeral, Albert met Mrs. Biddle when she slipped on the crematorium steps, saving herself by sitting down. Albert was one of several mourners who helped her to her feet and it happened that it was his arm she particularly held on to. There was to be a drink or two in the house next door to the dead man’s, since neighbours rather than any family had been his associates for as long as people could remember. ‘You’ll come on in?’ Mrs. Biddle invited Albert, and afterwards she asked him to see her safely to where she lived herself, in Appian Terrace, two streets away from the council estate. As he did so, she told him that some days her arthritis was so bad she couldn’t move from her bed. She lived in fear of the social services, she confided, constantly apprehensive that they would poke their noses into her life, counsellors they called themselves. Mrs. Biddle Albert wrote down afterwards, having learnt that this was her name. He perceived a significance in the fact that she had been at the funeral, as previously he had perceived a significance in the fact that he was passing by when the man with elephantiasis wished to cross the street. He cleaned Mrs. Biddle’s house for her, did her shopping, and was instructed to give the social services a flea in the ear if they arrived on the doorstep. Years ago in the kitchen of the Morning Star home he had learnt how to fry — sausages, bacon, bread, an egg — and something fried was good for her, so Mrs. Biddle said. Sometimes, for a change, he brought her a take-away, a curry, chips with a burger, or chicken from the Kentucky. He made her hot drinks, Oval-tine or Horlicks, Ribena or Marmite or cocoa, whatever she was in the mood for. ‘I come in for a place,’ he passed on to Pettie. ‘There’s an old lady give me a room.’

Mrs. Biddle says Albert is as a son to her. She would prefer it if he didn’t go out every night, but he has pointed out that cleaning up the Underground is work that has to be done. He is fortunate to have the work, he explains, a stroke of good fortune come his way.

‘You OK then, Mrs. Biddle?’ he inquires after he has stuck up the Spookee stickers. ‘You manage to eat a bit?’

Mrs. Biddle has eaten everything. In the sitting-room where she also sleeps she is still in bed, watching television, a game show with numbered boxes. She turns it off because when Albert is there she likes to hear his news.

‘Yeah, I been down the shops,’ he answers when she asks. ‘I paid the gas.’

‘You get the woman with the hair?’

‘Yeah, I got her. Violet she’s called. She has it on her badge.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised what she’s called, that woman.’ Albert says it takes all sorts. He stacks the dishes Mrs. Biddle has eaten from, making room on a tray for the metal teapot she has herself carried to her room. For a moment he worries, reminded by the teapot of her picking her steps from the kitchen, shuffling dangerously along, the teapot’s handle wrapped in a cloth where the black plastic binding fell off years ago. A trip and she could be scalded, lying there while he’s out or asleep. But when Mrs. Biddle decides to make her own tea she will not be moved from doing so.

‘No hurry on them dishes. Rest in the chair, Albert. Keep me company a bit.’

Even more than hearing Albert’s news Mrs. Biddle likes to share with him the memories that keep her going when she’s alone. As Gracie de Lisle, girl assistant to Halriati the Sicilian, and before that as one of the four Singing Cow-slips, she has not been unknown. When Mr. Biddle married her she was professionally engaged, twice nightly at the Tottenham Grand Empire.

In the small, crowded room — rows of cottages on shelves and in cabinets, camels and elephants and reindeer on the mantelpiece — Albert hears further highlights from the theatres and the halls. The cottages are of china, dully glazed so that a sense of reality is retained; the animals are of a brown material that has been grained to resemble carved wood. Theatrical photographs are displayed in mock-wooden frames on two tables and on the walls.

‘Nineteen forty-eight, the old Hip in Huddersfield. Puss in Boots and the lights failed.’

‘What did you do, Mrs. Biddle?’ Albert asks, although he knows.

‘Candles we had to resort to, the usherettes’ flashlights, you name it we had it. The day after Boxing Day. Spoilt it for the kiddies, they said.’

Albert never minds hearing a highlight more than once, throwing in the odd response in order to keep company with her because it’s company she’s after. He stayed with her all day the time her front-garden ornaments disappeared, and again when the social services wrote about her pension, saying it could be reduced, and again when they sent a request to know when it was she’d died. Keeping company is the heart of looking after people, as Albert first experienced in his Morning Star days. ‘Stay by me, Albert,’ they used to say, a catchphrase it became. The time the youths laughed when the man with elephantiasis sat down to rest himself on the edge of the pavement he stayed with him until the youths went away, even though the man said he was used to abuse on the streets.

‘“Milk that cow!” Aubrey shouted from the stilts, and then the back kicked the bucket away and the front did the little dance that had them in stitches. Harry Sunders was the best back in the business. Clowny took the front, and those two always had strong beer in the cow. A couple of Stingos in their pockets and sometimes they spilt it. Brought the house down when the Stingo dribbled out. They’d be prancing about, not knowing they was leaving little pools.’

‘Yes,’ Albert says. Everything is on the tray now. He tidies the bed, gathering up pages of the local newspaper and a magazine, listening to further tales while he does so. When there’s a pause he says:

‘You know you can be in the Salvation Army without musical knowledge, Mrs. Biddle?’

Mrs. Biddle sniffs. Peculiar in this day and age, the Salvationists. Grown men and women with their tambourines. Dismissively, she shakes her head. She could do without the Salvationists this morning.

‘You hear of Joseph of Arimathea, Mrs. Biddle?’

Mrs. Biddle doesn’t know if she has heard of Joseph of Arimathea or not. There was Joseph and Dan Saul, kept a greengrocer’s, Jewish boys. The father was a Joseph, too. The family moved up West, Dan Saul went into jewellery. Flashy he always was.

‘Time of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea. He took the body. There was another bloke come down out of a tree and carries the Cross. The time the Army was preaching I went up to them and asked the one with the glasses how they’re spelling Arimathea.’

Albert spells it now. Arimathea was a place, he explains, a desert locality, not so much as a bush to shade the ground. No water, nothing. Put seeds down and they wouldn’t grow.

You can’t live without water, Mrs. Biddle tetchily agrees, anyone living there should have moved away. Street preachers will tell you anything, Adam and Eve, feed the multitude with a fish. ‘Anything comes into their heads and then they get the tambourines out.’