Death in Summer by William Trevor Read Free Book Online Page A

and the graveyard and the gateless pillars of the house. She’s walking out into the countryside, and fields stretch to the horizon, with the wild flowers in the hedges, a plain brick farmhouse in the distance. ‘Look, a rabbit,’ she whispers, and Georgina Belle waves at the rabbit from the buggy, and you can smell honey in the honeysuckle.
    At Oxford Circus she goes with the crowd, jostled on the pavement. A gang of girls gnaw chicken bones and drink from cans, laughing and shouting at one another, strung out, in everyone’s way. Beggars poke out their hands from doorways, tourists dawdle, litter is thrown down. Street vendors sell perfume and watches and mechanical toys. Men in coloured shorts unwrap summer lollipops. Women expose reddened thighs. ‘Thaddeus Davenant,’ Pettie says aloud.
    He ran his fingers along the pale wood that edged the back of the sofa, standing there for a moment before she sat down, the grandmother already occupying a chair. He was solemn, not smiling when she held out the reference and the certificate. Still mourning his loss, he naturally wouldn’t have smiles to spare. Something about him reminds her of the man who talked to her in Ikon Floor Coverings, who explained why he recommended 0.35 wearing thickness ina vinyl. Thaddeus Davenant’s clothes were nothing like the grey suit and clean white shirt,
Eric
on the badge in the lapel, but there was something about his quiet manner that reminded her. More than once she went back to Ikon Floor Coverings, until the time he wasn’t there, gone on to another store, they didn’t know where. Not that she wants to think about the floor-coverings man now, nor the Sunday uncle either, since they let her down in the end. ‘Oh, yes, a lovely walk,’ Pettie says instead, and Thaddeus Davenant takes his tiny daughter from her arms. ‘Georgina Belle,’ he says.
    *
    Carefully, Albert attaches the Spookee sticker to his wall. He has all eight of the Spookee stickers now, collected from Mrs Biddle’s cornflakes’ packets. He stands back a foot or two to inspect the arrangement, his empty eyes engaged in turn with each of the grey, watery creatures, one with a red tongue lolling out, another gnashing devilish teeth. He moves further away, surveying the stickers from the door in order to see what the decoration looks like just in case Mrs Biddle ever glances in, not that she can manage the stairs, but you never know.
    Albert looks after Mrs Biddle in return for this room. Years ago, when he and Pettie ran away from the Morning Star, they slept rough, at first in an abandoned seed nursery and after that in cars if they could get into them, or in sheds left unlocked on the allotments that stretched for half a mile behind a depository for wrecked buses. In time Albert heard about the night work on the Underground; he slept by day, on benches or in waiting-rooms. Then, because he happened to be passing, he helped a man with elephantiasis to cross a street and the following morning he noticed theman again and helped him again, this time carrying for him a pair of trousers he was taking to a dry cleaner’s.
    Albert waited on the pavement outside the cleaner’s and when the man emerged he fell into step with him. He felt compassion for the man’s suffering – the great bloated body, the moisture of sweat on his forehead and his cheeks, the difficulty he experienced in gripping with his fingers. Albert did not say this but simply walked beside the man, restraining his own natural motion so that it matched the slow drag of the man’s. They did not speak much because speech was difficult for the man while he was engaged in the effort of movement, but when they reached a small supermarket – the Late-and-Early KP Minimarket – he thanked Albert for his assistance and his company, and turned to enter the place. He had time to spare, Albert said, and followed him in.
    He carried the wire basket around the shelves, filling it as he was directed. The man