Last Stories by William Trevor

Author:William Trevor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Friendship, Literary, Relationships, Short Stories (Single Author), Marriage & Divorce, Family Life
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2018-05-14T23:00:00+00:00

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Summer that year was fine and warm, September began well then was wet, October cold. In late November Harriet gave a party to celebrate Stephen’s twenty-sixth birthday. Afterwards, in the early hours of the next day when everyone had gone, she and Stephen restored the rooms which more than a hundred people had disordered. Doing so, they talked about their guests, most of them of Stephen’s generation; and in the kitchen Harriet washed up cutlery and glasses, Stephen dried and put away. They were in the drawing room again, plumping up cushions, finding what they had overlooked, when Stephen said, ‘Do you remember Emily Vance? One of your cleaners?’

In the months that had passed since the funeral there had hardly been a day when Emily Vance hadn’t come into Harriet’s thoughts. When the clergyman had led her into the graveyard, the first drops of a shower had begun to spatter the tombstones. He had been inadequate. He would always know he had been, he said, as, unseen by both of them, the unknown girl was taken from the church where she’d found peace. And Harriet then had felt inadequate too.

The fire in the drawing room had long ago died down, but even so she put the fireguard in place. They should go to bed now. There wasn’t much of the night left.

‘When you were out we often were alone, Emily Vance and I,’ Stephen said.

The stem of a glass had broken off, and Harriet watched him feeling where it had fallen for the dampness that would become a stain on the carpet. Finding nothing, he said the glass must have been empty.

‘She thought it was kind of you to let her have her coffee in the garden when it was fine. Sometimes I had mine there too. She was a lonely person.’

In the kitchen he dropped the broken glass into the waste-bucket beneath the sink. Empty bottles crowded the draining boards. A blue cardigan, left behind by someone, was draped over the back of a chair.

‘She doesn’t know the names of flowers,’ Stephen said. ‘Not a single one. We walked about the garden and she would ask and I would tell.’

Harriet said they had done enough for one night and ran the hot water in the sink, brushing it round the sides to leave it clean. In the hall there was a scarf they hadn’t noticed on the floor, left behind too. The telephone was off the hook. Stephen put it on again.

‘Emily Vance died,’ Harriet said on the stairs, because it had to be said now. ‘I should have told you. I’m sorry.’

Stephen shook his head. He asked about the death and didn’t flinch when he was told, was not surprised. ‘She talked to me a bit,’ he said. ‘Not that it was easy for Emily Vance to talk to anyone.’

‘She loved you.’

Stephen opened his bedroom door, turned on the light. It was a room that never changed. What was there he had chosen carefully, had taken nothing away, had added nothing.

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