William Trevor - Collected Stories

‘There’s a fête at Marmount,’ a man at the bar said. ‘Conservative fête, same Saturday every year.’

‘Ah certainly,’ said the barman, ‘but Marmount’s fifteen miles away. General Suffolk means a local fête. The General doesn’t have a car.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said the man. ‘Marmount’s not an easy spot to reach. Even if you did have a car, sir.’

‘I will have a sandwich, Jock,’ said General Suffolk. ‘Chop me a cheese sandwich like a good man.’ He was beginning to feel low; the day was not good; the day was getting out of control. Fear filled his mind and the tepid beer was no comfort. He began to pray inwardly, but he had little faith now in this communication. ‘Never mind,’ he said aloud. ‘It is just that it seems like a day for a fête. I won a half guinea at a summer fête last year. One never knows one’s luck.’ He caught sight of a card advertising the weekly films at the cinema of the nearby town.

‘Have you seen The Guns of Navarone?’ he questioned the barman.

‘I have, sir, and very good it is.’

The General nodded. ‘A powerful epic by the sound of it.’

‘That’s the word, General. As the saying goes, it had me riveted.’

‘Well, hurry the sandwiches then. I can catch the one-ten bus and achieve the first performance.’

‘Funny thing, sir,’ said the barman. ‘I can never take the cinema of an afternoon. Not that it isn’t a time that suits me, the hours being what they are. No, I go generally on my night off. Can’t seem to settle down in the afternoon or something. Specially in the good weather. To me, sir, it seems unnatural.’

‘That is an interesting point of view, Jock. It is indeed. And may well be shared by many – for I have noticed that the cinemas are often almost empty in the afternoon.’

‘I like to be outside on a good afternoon. Taking a stroll by a trout stream or in a copse.’

‘A change is as good as a cure, or whatever the adage is. After all, you are inside a good deal in your work. To be alone must be quite delightful after the idle chatter you have to endure.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying it, General, I don’t know how you do it. It would kill me to sit at the pictures on an afternoon like this. I would feel – as it were, sir – guilty.’

‘Guilty, Jock?’

‘Looking the Great Gift Horse in the mouth, sir.’

‘The –? Are you referring to the Deity, Jock?’

‘Surely, sir. I would feel it like an unclean action.’

‘Maybe, Jock. Though I doubt that God would care to hear you describe Him as a horse.’

‘Oh but, General –’

‘You mean no disrespect. It is taken as read, Jock. But you cannot be too careful.’

‘Guilt is my problem, sir.’

‘I am sorry to hear it. Guilt can often be quite a burden.’

‘I am never free of it, sir. If it’s not one thing it’s another.’

‘I know too well, Jock.’

‘It was not presumptuous of me to mention that thing about the cinema? I was casting no stone at you, sir.’

‘Quite, quite. It may even be that I would prefer to attend an evening house. But beggars, you know, cannot be choosers.’

‘I would not like to offend you, General.’

‘Good boy, Jock. In any case I am not offended. I enjoy a chat.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Not at all. But now I must be on my way. Consider your problem closely: you may discover some simple solution. There are uncharted regions in the human mind.’

‘Sir?’

‘You are a good fellow, Jock. We old soldiers must stick together.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Jock, taking the remark as a joke, since he was in the first place a young man still, and had never been in the army.

‘Well, cheerio then.’

‘Cheerio, sir.’

How extraordinary, thought the General, that the man should feel like that: guilty about daytime cinema attendance. As Mrs Hinch would have it, it takes all sorts.

The thought of Mrs Hinch depressed the General further and drove him straight to a telephone booth. He often telephoned his cottage at this time of day as a check on her time-keeping. She was due to remain at work for a further hour, but generally the telephone rang unanswered. Today he got the engaged signal. As he boarded his bus, he wondered how much it was costing him.

Taurus. 21 April to 20 May. Financial affairs straighten themselves out. Do not make decisions this afternoon: your judgement is not at its best.

The General peeped around the edge of the newspaper at the woman who shared his table. She was a thin, middle-aged person with a face like a faded photograph. Her hair was inadequately dyed a shade of brown, her face touched briefly with lipstick and powder. She wore a cream-coloured blouse and a small string of green beads which the General assumed, correctly, to be jade. Her skirt, which the General could not see, was of fine tweed.

‘How thoughtless of me,’ said the General. ‘I have picked up your paper. It was on the chair and I did it quite automatically. I am so sorry.’

He knew the newspaper was not hers. No one places a newspaper on the other chair at a café table when the other chair is so well out of reach. Unless, that is, one wishes to reserve the place, which the lady, since she made no protest at his occupying it, was clearly not interested in doing. He made the pretence of offering the paper across the tea-table, leaning forward and sideways to catch a glimpse of her legs.

‘Oh but,’ said the lady, ‘it is not my newspaper at all.’

Beautiful legs. Really beautiful legs. Shimmering in silk or nylon, with fine firm knees and intoxicating calves.

‘Are you sure? In that case it must have been left by the last people, I was reading the stars. I am to have an indecisive afternoon.’ She belongs to the upper classes, General Suffolk said to himself; the upper classes are still well-bred in the leg.

The lady tinkled with laughter. I am away, the General thought. ‘When is your birthday?’ he asked daringly. ‘And I will tell you what to expect for the rest of today.’

‘Oh, I’m Libra, I think.’

‘It is a good moment for fresh associations,’ lied the General, pretending to read from the paper. ‘A new regime is on its way.’

‘You can’t believe a thing they say.’

‘Fighting words,’ said the General, and they laughed and changed the subject of conversation.

In the interval at the cinema, when the lights had gone up and the girls with ice-cream began their sales stroll, the General had seen, two or three rows from the screen, the fat unhealthy figure of his friend Basil. The youth was accompanied by a girl, and it distressed General Suffolk that Basil should have made so feeble an excuse when earlier he had proposed an excursion to a fête. The explanation that Basil wished to indulge in carnal pleasures in the gloom of a picture house would naturally have touched the General’s sympathy. Basil was an untrustworthy lad. It was odd, the General reflected, that some people are like that: so addicted to the lie that to avoid one, when the truth is in order, seems almost a sin.

‘General Suffolk,’ explained the General. ‘Retired, of course.’

‘We live in Bradoak,’ said the lady. ‘My name actually is Mrs Hope-Kingley.’

‘Retired?’

‘Ha, ha. Though in a way it’s true. My husband is not alive now.’

‘Ah,’ said the General, delighted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I am quite over it, thank you. It is all of fifteen years since last I saw him. We had been divorced some time before his death.’

‘Divorce and death, divorce and death. You hear it all the time. May I be personal now and say I am surprised you did not remarry?’

‘Oh, General Suffolk, Mr Right never came along!’