William Trevor - Death in Summer

‘Oh, look, I don’t think-’

‘Old times’ sake, Thad. Five minutes for old times’ sake. I’d love to show you.’ And Mrs. Ferry whispers, grimacing to make a joke of her reservation: ‘I wouldn’t want anything handed over here, dear.’

The bill comes swiftly. He pays it and stands up. She gathers together her belongings.

‘You haven’t lost your looks, Thad.’ She lowers her voice again for that, working a dimple, the way she used to. ‘A dear, dear friend,’ she whispers to a couple who nod to her as they go by, who examine Thaddeus with curiosity. ‘Oh, darling, I’ve mislaid a glove!’ she cries, and people at the nearby tables stand up to poke about on the floor for a lace glove, of sentimental value. ‘Oh, I’m so fussed today!’ Mrs. Ferry apologizes when it’s discovered in the pocket of her skirt, and the Tea Cosy settles down again.

Two pounds and fourpence arrive in change. Thaddeus reaches for the coins and leaves a tip. With a plastic butcher’s bag, the Daily Telegraph and the Radio Times, her lace gloves in place, a large velvet handbag held tightly, Mrs. Ferry is ready now, and on the street outside she takes his arm.

‘That’s never your car, dear!’ she exclaims, eyeing Thaddeus’s battered old Saab and Rosie in it. ‘Well, I never!’

‘Are you far? Is it worth driving?’

‘A minute’s walk. You have a dog, dear.’

‘Yes.’

‘Remember the Sealyham at the hotel?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘H died, of course. We buried him at the back. Remember Oscar? The daytime porter?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘He went a fortnight later, poor old Oscar.’

She opens a door beside a shop window full of jars of sweets, Rolo and Kit-Kat and Mars bars advertised, Easter eggs reduced. The hall they pass through to reach uncarpeted stairs is stacked with cartons of similar confectionery, and strewn with junk mail. People listen in the Tea Cosy, Mrs. Ferry explains, they listen and they watch, he probably noticed. In the room she lives in she pours out gin, not offering it first. Both glasses have lipstick on them.

‘I haven’t changed my tipple.’ Mrs. Ferry winks, adding the Martini. There should be lemon, she apologizes, there should be ice. But lemons are a price these days, and ice she can never manage, the fridge she has. A fluffy teddybear, in blue with one eye gone, is on the bed.

‘Cheers, dear.’

‘I must be careful. I have to drive.’

‘Poor Oscar went in the hall. He carried in a couple’s bags, the next thing was we were loosening the poor chap’s collar. “I’ll sit down just a minute,” he said. Well, truth to tell, that was the end.’

Thaddeus nods, remembering Oscar, old even in 1979, burly and genial. He always suspected that Oscar knew.

‘Your mother wasn’t long gone in our day, dear. You used to mention your mother the odd time.’

‘Did I? I don’t remember that.’

‘Oh, definitely. On the strange side, I considered, but of course I never said. One’s nervous, young. A foreign lady, wasn’t she?’

‘My mother was Polish.’

‘Romantic, it sounded. Not that you’d ever say much.’

He never had; he never did. His childhood in that thread-bare past is one of shame: his unwanted presence, his garden friendship with the ghosts of pets, footsteps that passed by when he lay awake, whispers on the stairs.

‘Close you were, dear. Oh, very close.’

‘I suppose I was.’

He takes two twenty-pound notes and a ten from his wallet and places them on a bamboo table. He can see her counting them from a distance. He tells her how much is there.

‘Butter side up you’ve landed, dear. I haven’t done so well myself. What’s she like?’

‘I don’t really want to talk about Letitia.’

‘I know, dear, I know. I always thought you’d end up with a smasher, I bet she’s that. An eye for the ladies, Chef used to say when you hawked your produce in the Trees.’

He smiles, but it isn’t enough. He knows what Mrs. Ferry is thinking because it’s there in her eyes. It was there in the teashop, it was there when she embraced him: she was his fancy woman, and now he’s gone stuffy on her. ‘He can be so blooming stuffy,’ she used to say, referring to her husband. ’He gets my goat sometimes.’

‘Palpitations is what I suffer mainly,’ she’s saying now. ‘A warning, they give it as, and then there’s the digestive thing. I’ve had more barium meals than a cat’s had mice, and still it’s a bewilderment to the medics.’

‘I’m sorry, Dot.’

‘You were romantic yourself, you know, left alone in your big old house. I’d think of you, and long to be there with you. Oh, others did too, I don’t delude myself. What was she called, that girl you had before you and I had our naughtiness? Beatrice? Beryl?’

‘Bertranda.’

‘Funny, that, I always thought. You’re still seeing Bertranda, dear?’

‘I haven’t seen Bertranda since 1977.’

‘Well, there you go. Not that I ever knew the girl, but everything’s of interest as you get older. You find that, Thad?’

‘Not really.’

‘You spent a night at the Trees. When his Cheltenham uncle died. Remember that? You had to skulk about, Twenty not being en suite.’

Thaddeus doesn’t want to remember, but images and sounds occur: the narrow corridor, shoes outside the doors, the lavatory with the cracked window-pane, someone having a bath, a radio on in a room he passed.

‘You parked the van two streets away.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘That same chef’s in the Royal now. We still keep up.’

‘I must be going, Dot.’

‘Oh, love, you’ve only just come.’She stands with a bottle in each hand. Old times’ sake, she says again. Old times, old flames. A laugh comes moistly, a giggle that rises from some depth within her. The flesh of her chins and of her propped-up breasts wobbles, then settles again. ‘Remember that first afternoon, eh? My, you were keen that first afternoon!’

That was long ago, Thaddeus says, then realizes this sounds dismissive. Friendships belong to their time: he corrects his remark in an effort to mend matters. But the effort is wasted because Mrs. Ferry still isn’t listening.

‘Not that I wasn’t keen myself, dear. I’m not saying that for a minute. Bucketing down it was. That gutter leaking above the window, drip, drip, drip. I told him afterwards — the gutter above Number Twenty, and he said he’d get Oscar up a ladder.’

‘I really must go now.’

‘I treated him badly, Thad.’ Idly she caresses the blue teddybear, prodding at the empty eye. ‘He worshipped me and I threw it back at him.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

‘Poor little man, he wore that cravat to give himself a presence, like he tried for with the moustache. Everything for me, he said, and I threw it back. I lie awake sometimes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘He married again, of course. Happy as a sandboy.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘Not for me it isn’t, dear. Not for an erring lady. D’you. ever think of that, Thad? The error of our ways?’

Thaddeus smiles. He confesses that he often dwells on the error of his ways. He comments on the room they’re in, saying it’s charming.

‘It’s what I can afford, dear.’ She carries his eyes with hers around the room’s contents — the big refrigerator in a corner, the screen that half obscures a sink, the tattered curtains, the television on a shelf, her shopping thrown on to the bed. The evening sun shows up the dust on surfaces. ‘The lav’s a flight up. She charges for a bath, fifty p on the gas. Oh well, there you are! I soldier on.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘You bring that Bertranda to your house, Thad?’