William Trevor - Collected Stories

‘Near the lighthouse in Youghal,’ said Quillan, ‘there’s a shop I used buy Rainbow Toffees in.’

Miss Grimshaw appeared on the terrace and walked towards them. She was a small, plump woman with grey hair, and short legs and short arms. Generations of girls at St Mildred’s had likened her to a dachshund and had, among themselves, named her appropriately. She wore now a flowered dress and carried in her left hand a yellow plastic bag containing the fruits of her morning’s excursion: a number of shells.

‘At a later time,’ said Quillan, ‘I joined the merchant navy in order to get a polish. I knocked about the world a bit, making do the best way I could. And then a few years back I entered the investigation business.’

Miss Grimshaw, annoyed because an unprepossessing man in a blazer was sprawling in her chair, saw that her friend was holding in her hand a glass of red liquid and was further annoyed because of this: they pooled their resources at the beginning of each holiday and always consulted each other before making a purchase. Ignoring the sprawling man, she asked Miss Ticher what the glass contained, speaking sharply to register her disapproval and disappointment. She stood, since there was no chair for her to sit on.

‘I never went back to Youghal,’ the man said before Miss Ticher could reply to Miss Grimshaw’s query. ‘I only have the childhood memories of it now. Unhappy memories,’ said the man to Miss Grimshaw’s amazement. ‘Unhappy memories of a nice little place. That’s life for you.’

‘It’s an aperitif,’ said Miss Ticher, ‘that Mr Quillan kindly bought for me. Mr Quillan, this is Miss Grimshaw, my friend.’

‘We were discussing memories,’ said Quillan, pushing himself out of the deck-chair. ‘Miss Ticher and myself were going down Memory Lane.’ He laughed loudly, causing the teeth to move about in his mouth. His shoes were scuffed, Miss Grimshaw noted; the blue scarf that was stuck into the open neck of his shirt seemed dirty.

Again he walked abruptly away. He offered Miss Grimshaw no greeting and Miss Ticher no farewell. He moved along the terrace with the glass in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth. His trousers bagged at the back, requiring to be hitched up.

‘Who on earth’s that?’ demanded Miss Grimshaw. ‘You never let him pay for that stuff you’re drinking?’

‘He’s a detective,’ said Miss Ticher. ‘He’s watching a couple for a husband. He followed them here.’

‘Followed?’

‘He’s in the investigation business.’

Miss Grimshaw sat in the chair the man had been sitting in. Her eyes returned to the glass of red intoxicant her friend was still holding. She thought to herself that she had gone out alone, looking for shells because Agnes Ticher had said she was tired that morning, and the next thing was Agnes Ticher had got herself involved with a bore.

‘He smelt,’ said Miss Grimshaw. ‘I caught a most unwelcome little whiff.’

‘His whisky,’ Miss Ticher began. ‘Whisky has a smell –’

‘You know what I mean, Agnes,’ said Miss Grimshaw quietly.

‘Did you enjoy your walk?’

Miss Grimshaw nodded. She said it was a pity that Miss Ticher hadn’t accompanied her. She felt much better after the exercise. She had an appetite for lunch, and the salt of the sea in her nostrils. She looked again at the glass in Miss Ticher’s hand, implying with her glance that the consumption of refreshment before lunch could serve only to fatigue whatever appetite Miss Ticher had managed to gain in the course of her idle morning.

‘My God,’ said Miss Grimshaw, ‘he’s coming back.’

He was coming towards them with another deck-chair. Behind him walked a waiter bearing on a tin tray three glasses, two containing the red liquid that Miss Ticher was drinking, the third containing ice and whisky. Without speaking, he set up the deck-chair, facing both of them. The waiter moved an ornamental table and placed the glasses on it.

‘A local aperitif,’ said Quillan. ‘I wouldn’t touch it myself, Miss Grimshaw.’

He laughed and again had difficulty with his teeth. Miss Ticher looked away when his fingers rose to his mouth to settle them back into place, but Miss Grimshaw was unable to take her eyes off him. False teeth were common enough today, she was thinking: there was no need at all for them to come leaping from the jaw like that. Somehow it seemed typical of this man that he wouldn’t bother to have them attended to.

‘Miss Ticher and Miss Grimshaw,’ said Quillan slowly, as though savouring the two names. He drank some whisky. ‘Miss Ticher and Miss Grimshaw,’ he said again. ‘You’re neither of you a married woman. I didn’t marry myself. I was put off marriage, to tell you the truth, by the aunt and uncle down in Youghal. It was an unnatural association, as I saw from an early age. And then of course the investigation business doesn’t exactly encourage a fellow to tie up his loose ends with a female. My mother swam into the sea,’ he said, addressing Miss Grimshaw and seeming to be pleased to have an opportunity to retail the story again. ‘My dad swam in to get her back. They went down to the bottom like a couple of pennies. I was five months old.’

‘How horrible,’ said Miss Grimshaw.

‘If it hadn’t happened I’d be a different type of man today. Would you believe that? Would you agree with me, Miss Grimshaw?’

‘What?’

‘Would I be a different type of man if the parents had lived? When I was thirteen years of age I ran away with an entertainments crowd. I couldn’t stand the house a minute more. My uncle never said a word to me, the aunt used look away when she saw me coming. Meals were taken in silence.’ He paused, seeming to consider all that. Then he said: ‘Youghal’s a place like this place, Miss Grimshaw, stuck out on the sea. You know what I mean?’

Miss Grimshaw said she did know what he meant. He talked a lot, she thought, and in a most peculiar way. Agnes Ticher was keeping herself quiet, which no doubt was due to her embarrassment at having involved them both with such a character.

‘I have another memory,’ said Quillan, ‘that I can’t place at all. It is a memory of a woman’s face and often it keeps coming and going in my mind when I’m trying to sleep in bed. Like the black iron gate, it’s always been there, a vague type of face that I can discern and yet I can’t. D’you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Ticher.

Miss Grimshaw shook her head.

‘I told a nun about it one time, when I was a little lad, and she said it was maybe my mother. But I don’t believe that for an instant. Will I tell you what I think about that face?’

Miss Ticher smiled, and seeing the smile and noting as well a flush on her friend’s cheeks, it occurred to Miss Grimshaw that Agnes Ticher, having been imbibing a drink that might well have been more intoxicating than it seemed, was by now a little tipsy. There was an expression in Agnes Ticher’s eyes that suggested such a condition to Miss Grimshaw; there was a looseness about her lips. In a playful way, she thought, she would tell the story in the common-room when they returned to St Mildred’s: how Agnes Ticher had been picked up by a ne’er-do-well Irishman and had ended up in a squiffy condition. Miss Grimshaw wanted to laugh, but prevented herself.

‘What I think is this,’ said Quillan. ‘The face is the face of a woman who tried to steal me out of my pram one day when the aunt left the pram outside Pasley’s grocer’s shop. A childless woman heard about the tragedy and said to herself that she’d take the child and be a mother to it.’

‘Did a woman do that?’ cried Miss Ticher, and Miss Grimshaw looked at her in amusement.

‘They’d never bother to tell me,’ said Quillan. ‘I have only the instinct to go on. Hi,’ he shouted to the waiter who was hovering at the distant end of the terrace. ‘ Encore, encore! Trois verres, s ’ il vous plait. ’