Felicia's Journey by William Trevor Read Free Book Online Page A

floor, the few the old woman managed to interlock fallen apart, the jigsaw tray slipped down between the bed and the wall. In a moment there would be the bedpan, her father having to heave the old woman up on his own. The way she always does at this time, she’d feel under the rubber sheet for the clothes-peg bag she keeps her pension money in, and then she’d remember that some of it has been taken, that yesterday there was that unbelievable discovery. In the kitchen the panful of streaky bacon would be spitting on the stove, scattering little specks of fat on to the white enamel, on to the eggs still in their carton, waiting to be fried.
Felicia rises and washes in the corner of the room. She slips out of her nightdress and for a moment is naked, feeling shy to be so, as if she is in the room she shares at home. She dresses quickly, from habit also, then brushes her hair and smears on lipstick. She opens the door softly and finds the lavatory. As she crosses the landing, returning to her room, the sound of a radio comes faintly from downstairs. A few minutes later she descends to the dining-room, where a single place is laid, a plate of cornflakes already waiting.
When the woman with the hatchet face comes in she says something about sleep, and Felicia replies that she slept like a log. ‘Boiled all right for you?’ the woman offers, not waiting for a response. An overall, mainly blue, is wrapped tightly around her. She places a boiled egg in an eggcup beside the cornflakes and a plate of toast, and places a metal teapot on a coiled wire mat. She tells Felicia to help herself to milk and sugar. ‘Call out if you need anything,’ she adds before she leaves the room.
Felicia pours tea, finishes her cornflakes, and slowly spreadsbutter on a piece of toast. She cracks open the top of her egg. In the kitchen her father would be easing the bacon slices from the pan, slipping a knife under them where they have become stuck. ‘Like this, Felicia,’ he said years ago, showing her. He would cut bread for frying and slice black and white puddings. He likes his eggs turned, her brothers done on one side only.
The landlady appears again, to ask if everything is all right. She mentions the balance of the sum that was agreed, and Felicia pays what is owing.

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    He stops from time to time, drawing in to the curb, allowing her to move almost out of sight before he drives on slowly in pursuit. He knows where she is going since she stated what she intended in their conversation. But of course there could have been a change of heart overnight; he has had experience of that.
In fact, she turns into the bus station, exactly as she said she would, the same red coat, the same two carrier bags. Mr Hilditch watches for a few minutes longer, then drives away.
    There are no hills. Against a grey sky, tall bleak chimneys belch out their own hot clouds. Factories seem like fortresses, their towers protecting an ancient realm of iron and wealth. Terracotta everywhere has blackened to the insistent local sheen. The lie of the land is lost beneath a weight of purpose, its natural idiosyncrasy stifled, contours pressed away.
The bus that carries Felicia through all this is almost empty. Women with shopping-bags occupy seats on their own, staring ahead at the driver’s back. A child perpetually cries, ineffectively hushed by its mother. A man mutters as he turns the pages of a newspaper.
As the bus approaches the periphery of the town where Thompson Castings is, the flat roadside fields dwindle, and the factories intensify in number, one rubbing against another. In one of them, Felicia imagines Johnny Lysaght, with spare parts arranged behind him floor to ceiling, in wooden drawers and on shelves. She imagines him in his work clothes, a brown overall, the same brown as the assistants in Multilly’s hardware. He looks for something he has been asked for, and whistles the way he sometimes does. When she visualizes it, Thompson Castings is a placelike