William Trevor - Death in Summer

‘Yes.’

‘She’s not too bright. There’s been sedation, of course.’

‘I understand.’

‘She’ll know more about herself when she’s had a sleep. She lives on her own, we’re to understand?’

‘Yes, she’s on her own.’

‘You can always tell. I’m sorry about that little error.’

‘I’ll go in a moment.’

The sister nods and goes herself. Mrs. Ferry’s murmuring continues when Thaddeus returns to her bedside. It ceases when she opens her eyes. Slowly a smile begins, then wearily languishes.

‘Your wife,’ she says. ‘I often think about that kindness.’

‘I’m a widower, Dot. I wanted to tell you that.’

‘A what?’

‘A widower.’

‘Never, dear. He married a Lytham lady. Still clonking along, the pair of them.’

‘No, Dot, it’s -’

‘June eighty-eight, the registry in Lytham. Funny, how some people make a go of it.’

She closes her eyes, then with an effort opens them again.

‘The pancreas. They say — it’s not so good.’

‘It’ll be all right, Dot.’

‘You’ll take me to your lovely home, will you? Will you, Thad? I always wanted that.’

‘Of course.’

‘Butter side up, Thad. I always knew you’d settle butter side up. I used to say to Oscar, I said to Chef. “Good-looking boy,” Chef said. Well, you know what Chef got up to.’

Thaddeus doesn’t, but nods all the same.

‘It’s final, you know,’ Mrs. Ferry murmurs. ‘You know that, Thad? This lovely summer and it’s final.’

‘Of course it isn’t.’

‘I liked it best at Blackpool. I never thought I’d like a place like Blackpool, but I did. Time we were naughties there, you and I.’

He does not deny the claim, only wondering if for the moment he is someone else for her, or if the confusion’s in her memory.

‘I wanted you, Thad. Oh, my dear, I wanted you so.’

‘You had me.’

‘Not ever. A boy you were. To this day, Thad. Pour us a drink, dear.’

‘In a moment. Just rest a while.’

‘You think he knows? You think they told him? The day he married me he said he was the luckiest man on earth and all I did was lead him a dance. You tell him that from me? You tell him I’m sorry, Thad?’

‘Of course.’

‘Like yesterday, Blackpool seems. But then again it isn’t, is it?’

‘Not quite.’

‘Well, there you go, as they say.’

‘You rest now, Dot.’

‘Your lovely house, your lovely wife. I’m happy for you, Thad.’

Her head drops back, a dribble runs from one corner of her mouth. Alarmed, Thaddeus presses the bell that hangs near the pillow.

‘She’s sleeping now,’ the nurse who comes says.

Rosie noses about the hospital car park. Leaning against the side of the car, he lets her for a while. Butter side up, and of course that’s true. Why could he never have been less elusive, less private with a woman who so longed for him to be forthcoming? As she lay there now he could not even say that his garden is suffering from the drought, nor that his mother-in-law has come to his house, that he and she — old enemies — are determined to create a family of a kind and that, for both of them, there is the beginning of recovery after the shock of death. He is ashamed he could confess today to being a widower when he could not before.

The guilt that shadows a relationship accompanies him on the drive home, still hanging about his thoughts when he leaves the traffic behind. Not far from Quincunx a rabbit scuttles from one thorn hedge to the other and he slows down to avoid it, even though rabbits are a nuisance in the garden.

10

‘No, that’s Mr. Davenant I’d think,’ Maidment says in the drawing-room.

He speaks soothingly, standing over her, looking down at her. She is huddled on the sofa, one hand grasping the other in an effort to prevent their shaking. Rosie is in the garden again, having given her single, staccato bark. A door closes, and there are Thaddeus’s footsteps in the hall and then he’s in the room.

‘The child’s been taken, sir,’ she hears Maidment saying, and Thaddeus saying Zenobia has told him already. Thaddeus asks what happened exactly and she says it was her fault. While she’s speaking there is the sound of another car.

‘When I woke up Georgina wasn’t there,’ she says.

Maidment goes before the doorbell summons him. The hall door opens and there are voices. Thaddeus’s tone is expressionless when he asks again what happened.

‘I fell asleep,’ she says.

The police officers are two men and a woman. Unable to prevent herself, she wonders if they’re the ones who came before, their presence now connecting the two events. The two events belong together, an insistence hammers in her brain: if Letitia had not died this would not be happening now. That makes no sense, yet already has gathered a rationality of its own.

‘Mr. Davenant?’ one of the officers greets Thaddeus. He is a bulky, dishevelled man, not in uniform, the frayed part of his tie half hidden in its knot. The tie is red and green, held in place with a tiepin. There’s a trace of cigarette ash on the brown of his jacket.

‘Yes,’ Thaddeus says.

She looks up to nod when Thaddeus says who she is. She says again it was her fault.

‘No one’s fault, ma’am, something like this.’ The policeman shakes his head, his tone tiredly sympathetic. She can feel him wanting to sigh; she knows he blames her. Old, he’s thinking, trying not to let it show. ‘Let’s just sort out the facts,’ he says.

None of the three sits down, although Thaddeus has indicated that they should. The uniformed man is short-haired, in early middle age, a finger missing from his left hand. The woman is much younger, and smarter in appearance, her blue uniform freshly pressed. A poor skin well disguised, Maidment observed when he opened the hall door, but Mrs. Iveson doesn’t notice that.

‘Is there anyone you can think of?’ The man who is not in uniform continues to be in charge, the short-haired one fiddling with some kind of recording gadget or bleeper, she can’t tell which.

Thaddeus shakes his head. He says he has only minutes ago returned to the house. Then he turns to her.

‘Please tell us.’ He looks down at her, his voice calm, as if he wishes to be soothing, as Maidment was a moment ago. She thought it was a dream when she awoke and saw the rug empty but for the toys and the carry-cot on it. She stood up and looked around her. She stared at the rug and the toys and the carry-cot, feeling she was still in a dream.

‘I ran about the garden like a mad creature, calling Georgina’s name over and over again. I went on calling out, thinking she had crawled away. But of course that was ridiculous.’

‘And there is no one either of you can think of?’ Patiently the question is posed again. And then: ‘The child’s mother is not here, sir?’

Mrs. Iveson closes her eyes; again there is the feeling that she is in a dream. Thaddeus says he is widowed.

‘I see, sir.’

Relentlessly, or so it seems to Mrs. Iveson, the man goes on. His colleagues are not wearing jackets, but he has made no concession to the heat of the afternoon. His untidy brown suit is heavy and wintry-looking.

‘There’s no one who could have an interest in the child, sir?’

‘No.’

For a moment, when the Maidments brought her into the house, she found it hard to speak. Maidment suggested brandy but she didn’t want it. When he was on the telephone she asked Zenobia what time it was.

‘And you can think of no one, madam?’

‘No.’

The young policewoman silently condoles, her gaze lowered to her plain black shoes, then moving over the polished boards of the floor, then raised again. She cannot offer pity in a smile; it would not do to smile. WPC Denise Flynn she was introduced as.