After Rain by William Trevor

Author:William Trevor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780140258349
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘I think I’ll pay them. Simplest, that would be.’

With her right hand on the newel of the banister, about to ascend the stairs, Alicia stared in disbelief at her sister. When Catherine nodded and continued on her way to the kitchen she followed her.

‘But you can’t.’ Alicia stood in the doorway while Catherine washed and rinsed the cups they’d drunk their bedtime tea from. ‘You can’t just pay them what isn’t owing.’

Catherine turned the tap off at the sink and set the cups to drain, slipping the accompanying saucers between the plastic bars of the drainer. Tomorrow she would withdraw the same sum from the building-society account and take it herself to the Learys in Brady’s Lane. She would stand there while a receipt was issued.

‘Catherine, you can’t hand out more than two hundred pounds.’

‘I’d rather.’

As she spoke, she changed her mind about the detail of the payment. Matthew had been obliging Leary by paying cash, but there was no need to oblige him any more. She would arrange for the Irish Nationwide to draw a cheque payable to T. P. Leary. She would bring it round to the Learys instead of a wad of notes.

‘They’ve taken you for a fool,’ Alicia said.

‘I know they have.’

‘Leary should go behind bars. You’re aiding and abetting him. Have sense, woman.’

A disappointment rose in Alicia, bewildering and muddled. The death of her own husband had brought an end, and her expectation had been that widowhood for her sister would be the same. Her expectation had been that in their shared state they would be as once they were, now that marriage was over, packed away with their similar mourning clothes. Yet almost palpable in the kitchen was Catherine’s resolve that what still remained for her should not be damaged by a fuss of protest over a confidence trick. The Guards investigating clothes sold at a jumble sale, strangers asked if a house-painter’s wife had bought this garment or that, private intimacies made public: Catherine was paying money in case, somehow, the memory of her husband should be accidentally tarnished. And knowing her sister well, Alicia knew that this resolve would become more stubborn as more time passed. It would mark and influence her sister; it would breed new eccentricities in her. If Leary had not come that day there would have been something else.

‘You’d have the man back, I suppose?’ Alicia said, trying to hurt and knowing she succeeded. ‘You’d have him back in to paint again, to lift the bits and pieces from your dressing-table ?’

‘It’s not to do with Leary.’

‘What’s it to do with then?’

‘Let’s leave it.’

Hanging up a tea-towel, Catherine noticed that her fingers were trembling. They never quarrelled; even in childhood they hadn’t. In all the years Alicia had lived in the house she had never spoken in this unpleasant way, her voice rudely raised.

‘They’re walking all over you, Catherine.’

‘Yes.’

They did not speak again, not even to say goodnight. Alicia closed her bedroom door, telling herself crossly that her expectation had not been a greedy one.

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