William Trevor - Death in Summer

On the street again she examines spectacles in an optician’s window. All of them are more attractive than hers. She saw the grandmother looking at hers, not thinking much of them. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ the grandmother would have said to him behind that closed door, and he’d have argued that he didn’t see why not. But the grandmother would have gone on and on.

‘Of course, you could go for contacts,’ the woman in the optician’s suggests, although she’s wearing glasses herself, with jewels in the hinge area and silver trim on the side pieces. Disposable contact lenses you can have now, she points out, no more than a film over the eyes, throw them away every night. Available on EasiPlan, the woman says.

‘How much, though?’ Pettie asks, and there are questions then, and calculations, and a form to fill in, information required about the applicant’s bank account, name and address of employer, length of time in present position, if credit has ever been refused or withheld. Pettie says she’ll think about it. The scarf with the horses’ heads on it is draped over a pair of smoky blue frames which Pettie is about to take into her possession. But she can tell that the woman with the jewelled hinges is sharp, and changes her mind.

‘Excuse me, please.’

For a moment she imagines the man outside the optician’s is a detective who has followed her from the scarf counter or the shoe shop, but when he speaks again it is to ask the way to Marble Arch. Pettie directs him, repeating the directions because he isn’t quick on the uptake. When she has finished and has told him how long she estimates the journey will take on foot, which is how he has indicated he intends to make it, he invites her to have a cup of tea or coffee. ‘Maybe stronger?’ he offers also. He’s sallow-skinned, from somewhere in the East, Pettie speculates. Beer? he suggests, still smiling. Maybe barley wine, which bucks you up?

Pettie walks away. In Leicester Square she sits at the end of a damp wooden seat otherwise occupied by a couple fondling one another. There was a smell of lavender when she was waiting in the hall, maybe coming from the polish on the panelling because you could smell a waxiness, too. There was a gong like the one the slave hits at the beginning of old films, only smaller, and through an open door she could see the dining-room silver — little ornamental fowls on a big oval table, and salt and pepper containers — and blue glasses on a sideboard, and a fireguard that was a seat as well, upholstered in red leather and buttoned. The silver was valuable, anyone could tell that. One of the fowls would have gone into her bag so’s you’d hardly notice the bulge, spoons from the sideboard, a little china box from the table in the hall. But she didn’t even consider it.

The couple who have been fondling one another go away. She took her glasses off when the grandmother was out of the room. She held them for a minute, wanting him to see her without them, but unable to see him properly herself. ‘I hope you didn’t find the journey too terrible,’ he said, and she shook her head; the journey was nothing. ‘There would be adequate time off,’ he’d said on the phone. ‘We could arrange that between us.’ He had made his mind up then. He had made his choice; he was a man who knew immediately. Time off she would spend in the garden or just walking about the country, not ever bothering to go back to the streets. She would have told him that if the grandmother hadn’t come back then.

A black man, talking, sits down where the couple were. He scatters crumbs for the pigeons, breaking up bread he takes from a pocket. He is speaking about someone for whom he would lay down his life or obtain money by whatever means. His eyes are bloodshot, his teeth flash as he converses, seeming occasionally to address the pigeons, who softly coo for him. Two women go by, talking about their health.

It was just before the old woman said they’d go upstairs to the nursery that she knew she definitely had feelings for him. She looked back from the door and he was stroking the dog again, a consolation in his hurting. That grave would have been in his mind, and his motherless baby.

It has helped, going round the shops: it’s nice to think of the scarf in her handbag, and the bows from the coats, and the tights. If she’d walked out of the optician’s with the smoky frames she would have had to find out in another shop if she could replace her wire ones with them, which would cost her — some exorbitant amount, as always is the case when you want something. Tuesday or Wednesday she’ll take what she’s got to the car-boot man, with a few more items added in the meantime. No point in going out there with only three.

Taking possession of things touches a part of Pettie she does not understand, stirring an excitement in her that never fails to brighten up the day. The first time she did it in a shop — her fingers edging towards a blue ballpoint pen — she experienced a throb of fear and hesitated, thinking she couldn’t. Yet a moment later she did. ‘No, over to the right,’ she instructed the man behind the counter, who had to stand on a stool to reach a box of chocolates with a castle on it. Her fingers drew the ballpoint towards her, then closed around it. A bigger box was what she was after, she said, and flowers she’d prefer to a castle. Outside, she threw the ballpoint away.

The car-boot man approached her one day when she’d just come out of a shop. If ever she had anything she wanted to get rid of — articles of clothing she had tired of, odds and ends she might dispose of — he’d give her a good price, old or new, it didn’t matter. She went with him to his house and spread out on a table what she had just acquired. He didn’t pay much in spite of what he’d said about a good price, and never has on any of the occasions she has visited him since. He makes an offer, take it or leave it; the best he can do, times are hard. Bearded, with glasses, he has never revealed his name. His house is stuffy, the windows always tightly closed. The money he pays her comes from odd jobs, she tells Albert, who always wants to know where money comes from. Cleaning, she says. Working a price-gun.

‘No, man. No more.’ The last of the black man’s crumbs have been scattered, but the pigeons still crowd his legs. Two weeks he has gone without a drink, he assures the pigeons and the companion who is not present. ‘Honey, that is for you. Honey, I suffer.’

People wait outside the cinemas, drab against the glamour of the posters and the familiar faces of the stars. Georgina Belle could be a star’s name, and Pettie wonders how it came into her thoughts. ‘A total waste that was,’ a cross voice complains, and a couple walk away.

The grandmother said they’d only minutes ago decided on another arrangement. She would be coming to live in the house herself, to take her daughter’s place as best she could until the baby was older. It was sensible in the circumstances, but Pettie didn’t listen to why that was. The clock in the panelling struck, five o’clock it would have been. The grandmother said something about the heatwave when she held the front door open, then gave her the ten-pound note.

In a Wimpy Bar Pettie squirts tomato ketchup on to chips and grey minced meat. When out to dinner, Miss Rapp’s column laid down, refrain from recounting the details of a hospital operation while other folk are eating. You’d get into the way of things in a house like that one. You’d leave something for Miss Manners, you’d get your grammar right. Blush pink on your fingernails, nothing objectionable, nothing the woman holding the stepladder could sniff at. Magic Touch on any skin defects.

Her Coca-Cola comes. She sips a little, then slowly begins to eat, not registering the taste, nor where she is. She lights her remaining cigarette and crumples up the empty packet. ‘Come downstairs for a sherry,’ he invites, his quiet baby asleep, a rag doll on the pillow. The sherry glasses have long stems, two glasses on a red and gold tray. ‘It suits you, Nanny,’ he says, about the uniform they have given her. Two shades ofblue, with only touches of white, the stockings black. A widower is lonely: that’s there between them. He doesn’t say it; he doesn’t have to; the old woman couldn’t manage it is what he says, too much for her. It’s dark outside, a winter’s evening and the fire is lit.