Love and Summer by William Trevor

Author:William Trevor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-04-15T21:00:00+00:00

14

Miss Connulty’s overnight lodgers one by one awoke in answer to the clamour of the alarm clock supplied in every room. Each stilled the peremptory summons, stretched and yawned, emerged from the bedclothes, drew back the curtains, then went to check the occupancy or otherwise of the lavatory and the bathroom. Twenty minutes later three men in dark business suits, with collar and tie, and shoes that Miss Connulty had the night before picked up from outside their bedroom doors and polished, descended the stairs to the dining-room. A fourth man, Mr Buckley, was still dressing. Gohery, the metalwork instructor, back now from his summer holidays, was already finishing at the breakfast table. Joseph Paul had not yet returned from early Mass.

‘Your eggs?’ Miss Connulty called through the hatch she opened between the kitchen and the dining-room when she heard the murmur of voices. ‘How’ll I do your eggs?’

The men ordered them fried, as usually the preference was. Those of the Horton’s traveller were to be turned, which was usual also. All three said yes to Miss Connulty’s enquiries as to tomato and sausage. That bacon would be on each plate went without saying. The Wolsey (Ireland) man enquired as to the availability of black pudding this morning and Miss Connulty said there was plenty.

There was a brief delay, during which Gohery rose from the table. He nodded without speaking to the three men, as he had when each had entered the dining-room. On the stairs he nodded at Mr Buckley, who was making his slow way to the hall, where every morning of his overnight sojourns at Number 4 he had, for close on thirty-five years, tapped the weather-glass that hung beside the hallstand. In the kitchen Miss Connulty heard him greeted and introduced to the man who was a newcomer in the house. She did not need to open the hatch: these days, Mr Buckley took only Weetabix.

The Horton’s man enquired as to Mr Buckley’s health and was informed that it was first class, which the Horton’s man knew was not true: Mr Buckley was a heavily built, drooping man of yellowish pallor and comatose features, whose pretence, to others and to himself, was that he suffered no ailments and was as sprightly as ever he’d been. But it was said in the shops of the towns he visited that he often, these days, made an error in his orders, that alterations were effected by kindly shopkeepers who knew him well and protected him that he might safely reach the retirement he secretly craved, and the pension that went with it. Stationery and fancy goods were his line; in his decline, as in his heyday, he was fondly respected.

The doors of the hatch opened again and a moment later Miss Connulty entered the dining-room with a rack of toast, and buttered bread. She carried from the hatch the plates she had placed there, enquiring from the man who hadn’t stayed before if his fried bread was brown enough. He said it was.

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