Death In Summer by William Trevor

Author:William Trevor [Trevor, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36741-9
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 1999-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

7

Mahonia shoots shrivel, the elaeagnus is arrested. The climbing hydrangea droops, the leaves of the smoke shrubs have lost their sheen. Thaddeus’s spinach goes to seed, the potatoes he digs are small. The drought is worse than the drought of 1976; the worst, so people interested in such matters say, for two hundred years. In the fields the sheep are fed hay, cattle are parched when streams dry up.

But the apple trees in Thaddeus’s garden are laden, the pear trees and the plum orchard. Gooseberries and redcur-rants ripen before their time. Cosmos has grown high, its misty foliage heavy with purple flowers, and pink and mauve and white. Butterflies flap silently through the buddleia.

Beneath the catalpa tree, with her grandchild on a tartan rug beside her deckchair, Mrs Iveson reads. Casting shadows on the pages of her book, lacy white panicles hang among the vast leaves, their scent delicate in the heat. On a cold grey morning in late December Mr Charles set forth as usual, his letters stamped and sealed. Miss Amble greeted him, Mrs Mace a moment later. To both he raised his hat. The plump housemaid did it, Mrs Iveson’s thought is, before The Mystery of the Milestone slips from her fingers.

*

When you had collected seven transfers from seven tins of cocoa you sent away the seven pictures they made and received in return a statuette of Snow White. With a crust of bread clamped between her teeth, skinning and chopping two onions, Zenobia remembers that. She washes carrots and parsnips beneath a running tap, then trims the fat from a tenderloin of pork. Duplicates wouldn’t do. She had Sneezy twice and Happy four times and still had to go on collecting. Her father said you’d maybe drink forty gallons of cocoa to get it right. He declared the whole thing a disgrace, on a par with chain letters and brush salesmen at the door.

‘She has settled in,’ she hears, as from a distance, her husband admit. ‘I have to say you were right.’

Removing the bread from her mouth, she is startled: that does not come easily from him. He was certain there would be fireworks, unease at the very least. In spite of a loss two days ago at Ascot, he has given in gracefully; and Zenobia knows better than to gloat.

‘It’s early days yet, of course,’ she acknowledges, since that seems only fair.

‘She has come to accept what must be accepted.’

Maidment has inspected the newcomer’s correspondence. Letters are often left not yet completed on her dressing-table, all to her friend in Sussex, whose replies later tie up loose ends. At the kitchen table, replacing one of the lugs that hold the strap of his wristwatch, he agrees that the blood tie of the child has made the difference.

‘As you said yourself,’ he graciously repeats. His beaky features are bent close to his task, the spigot in the spring of the metal lug repeatedly slipping as he attempts to prise it home with the blade of a knife.

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