William Trevor - After Rain

Recalling the same sorting out of possessions at the time of her own loss, Alicia was in no way distressed. She had experienced little emotion when her husband’s death occurred: for the last nineteen years of her marriage she had not loved him.

‘You’ve been a strength,’ Catherine said, for her sister had been that and more, looking after her as she used to, years ago, when they were children.

‘Oh no, no,’ came Alicia’s deprecation.

Thomas Pius John Leary was by trade a painter and decorator. He had, for this work, no special qualifications beyond experience; he brought to it no special skill. As a result, he was often accused of poor workmanship, which in turn led to disputes about payment. But he charged less than his competitors and so ensured a reasonably steady demand for his services. When for one reason or another the demand wasn’t there he took on any kind of odd job he was offered.

Leary was middle-aged now, married, the father of six children. He was a small, wiry man with tight features and bloodshot eyes, his spareness occasionally reminding people of a hedgerow animal they could not readily name. Sparse grey hair was brushed straight back from the narrow dome of his forehead. Two forefingers, thumbs, middle fingers, upper lip and teeth, were stained brown from cigarettes he manufactured with the aid of a small machine. Leary did not wear overalls when at work and was rarely encountered in clothes that did not bear splashes of paint.

It was in this condition, the damp end of a cigarette emerging from a cupped palm, that he presented himself to Catherine and Alicia one afternoon in November, six weeks after the death. He stood on the doorstep, declaring his regrets and his sympathy in a low voice, not meeting Catherine’s eye. In the time that had passed, other people had come to the door and said much the same thing, not many, only those who found it difficult to write a letter and considered the use of the telephone to be inappropriate in such circumstances. They’d made a brief statement and then had hurried off. Leary appeared inclined to linger.

‘That’s very good of you, Mr. Leary,’ Catherine said.

A few months ago he had repainted the front of the house, the same pale blue. He had renewed the white gloss of the window-frames. ‘Poor Leary’s desperate for work,’ Matthew had said. ‘Will we give the rogue a go?’ Alicia had been against it, Leary not being a man she’d cared for when he’d done other jobs for them. Catherine, although she didn’t much care for Leary either, felt sorry for anyone who was up against it.

‘Could I step in for a minute ?’

Across the street the convent children were running about in the play-yard before their afternoon classes began. Still watching them, Catherine was aware of checking a frown that had begun to gather. He was looking for more work, she supposed, but there was no question of that. Alicia’s misgivings had been justified: there’d been skimping on the amount and quality of the paint used, and inadequate preparation. ‘We’ll know not to do that again,’ Matthew had said. Besides, there wasn’t anything else at present.

‘Of course.’ Catherine stood aside while Leary passed into the long, narrow hall. She led the way down it, to the kitchen because it was warm there. Alicia was polishing the cutlery at the table, a task she undertook once a month.

‘Sit down, Mr. Leary,’ Catherine invited, pulling a chair out for him.

‘I was saying I was sorry,’ he said to Alicia. ‘If there’s any way I can assist at all, any little job, I’m always there.’

‘It’s kind of you, Mr. Leary,’ Catherine said swiftly, in case her sister responded more tartly.

‘I knew him since we were lads. He used be at the Christian Brothers’.’

‘Yes.’

‘Great old days.’

He seemed embarrassed. He wanted to say something but was having difficulty. One hand went into a pocket of his jacket. Catherine watched it playing with the little contrivance he used for rolling his cigarettes. But the hand came out empty Nervously, it was rubbed against its partner.

‘It’s awkward,’ Leary said.

‘What’s awkward, Mr. Leary?’

‘It isn’t easy, how to put it to you. I didn’t come before because of your trouble.’

Alicia laid down the cloth with which she had been applying Goddard’s Silver Polish to the cutlery and Catherine watched her sister’s slow, deliberate movements as she shined the last of the forks and then drew off her pink rubber gloves and placed them one on top of the other beside her. Alicia could sense something; she often had a way of knowing what was coming next.

‘I don’t know are you aware,’ Leary enquired, addressing only Catherine, ‘it wasn’t paid for?’

‘What wasn’t?’

‘The job I done for you.’

‘You don’t mean painting the front?’

‘I do, ma’am.’

‘But of course it was paid for.’

He sighed softly. An outstanding bill was an embarrassment, he said. Because of the death it was an embarrassment.

‘My husband paid for the work that was done.’

‘Ah no, no.’

The frown Catherine had checked a few moments ago wrinkled her forehead. She knew the bill had been paid. She knew because Matthew had said Leary would want cash, and she had taken the money out of her own Irish Nationwide account since she had easy access to it. ‘I’ll see you right at the end of the month,’ Matthew had promised. It was an arrangement they often had; the building-society account in her name existed for this kind of thing.

‘Two hundred and twenty-six pounds is the extent of the damage.’ Leary smiled shiftily. ‘With the discount for cash.’

She didn’t tell him she’d withdrawn the money herself. That wasn’t his business. She watched the extreme tip of his tongue licking his upper lip. He wiped his mouth with the back of a paint-stained hand. Softly, Alicia was replacing forks and spoons in the cutlery container.

‘It was September the account was sent out. The wife does all that type of thing.’

‘The bill was paid promptly. My husband always paid bills promptly.’

She remembered the occasion perfectly. ‘I’ll bring it down to him now,’ Matthew had said, glancing across the kitchen at the clock. Every evening he walked to McKenny’s bar and remained there for three-quarters of an hour or so, depending on the company. That evening he’d have gone the long way round, by French Street, in order to call in at the Learys’ house in Brady’s Lane. Before he left he had taken the notes from the brown Nationwide envelope and counted them, slowly, just as she’d done herself earlier. She’d seen the bill in his hand. ‘Chancing his arm with the taxman,’ she remembered his remarking lightly, a reference to Leary’s preference for cash.

On his return he would have hung his cap on its hook in the scullery passage and settled down at the kitchen table with the Evening Press, which he bought in Healy’s sweetshop on his way back from McKenny’s. He went to the public house for conversation as much as anything, and afterwards passed on to Alicia and herself any news he had gleaned. Bottled Smithwick’s was his drink.

‘D’you remember it?’ Catherine appealed to her sister because although she could herself so clearly recall Matthew’s departure from the house on that particular September evening, his return eluded her. It lay smothered somewhere beneath the evening routine, nothing making it special, as the banknotes in the envelope had marked the other.

‘I remember talk about money,’ Alicia recalled, ‘earlier that day. If I’ve got it right, I was out at the Legion of Mary in the evening.’

‘A while back the wife noticed the way the bill was unpaid,’ Leary went on, having paused politely to hear these recollections. ‘ “It’s the death that’s in it,” the wife said. She’d have eaten the face off me if I’d bothered you in your trouble.’