Love and Summer

Love and Summer by William Trevor Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Love and Summer by William Trevor Read Free Book Online
Authors: William Trevor
Tags: Fiction, Literary
shoes were in need of better heels and soles. Even this morning in the sun at the railway station, he had a frozen look.
    His journey from St Morpeth’s Terrace had taken him past the Protestant church, called after St Morpeth also and distinguished by its dark, slender spire and ancient gravestones, past the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, limestone bright, with space for parking, and a pietà separating its second and third flights of steps. The one-time librarian had entered St Morpeth’s, as he always did, and stayed for fifteen minutes.
    When no train arrived - or when, in Orpen Wren’s belief, one arrived and went on without putting down any passengers - he set out on his walk back to the town, the shops beginning when he reached Irish Street. He paused at the windows in case a display had changed overnight. None had: drapers’ dummies were as they had been since early spring, the spectacles on an optician’s cardboard faces had been the same for longer. Pond’s beauty aids were still reduced, travel bargains still offered, interest rates steady.
    In Magennis Street a steel keg was being rolled to a pavement aperture. The tall assistant from McGovern’s, white-aproned, with glasses, was talking to a van driver. Yorkshire Relish, Thick. 12 Bottles , the printing on a carton in the van driver’s arms declared. Renowned for his resemblance to de Valera, the tall assistant ticked off the item on an order sheet and said there should be something from Mi Wadi.
    A cat came creeping into Orpen’s legs, rubbing itself against his shins, and he bent down to stroke its silky black head. He knew this cat and enjoyed its company. But, as abruptly as always, it lost interest and slinked away.
    ‘Wait till I’ll get it for you.’ The tall assistant greeted him from the shop doorway, hurrying back to the tea counter even while he spoke. He opened one drawer and then another, eventually finding an envelope on a mahogany shelf between two tall Oriental canisters in which coffee beans were stored. ‘Well, that was great,’ he said, alluding to a reference to McGovern’s in the letter he had been lent.
    ‘You noticed it?’
    ‘Oh, I did, I did.’
    ‘Would Mr McGovern remember the occasion?’
    ‘To tell you the truth, he said he didn’t.’
    The documents that were carried twice a day to the railway station - notes kept of births and deaths, receipts for burial charges at the Church of Ireland graveyard at Lisquin, papers relating to the purchase or sale of land, records of maintenance and repairs at the house - made turgid reading for the most part. But there were a few personal letters that were of greater interest, that touched upon life during the years of Lord Townshend’s viceroyalty, or related details of the rebellion of 1798, or told of the Famine years. In shops Orpen sometimes left one for perusal.
    Carefully now, he tucked what had been returned to him into his clothes and continued on his way. Sometimes his name eluded him, but returned when it was used by someone on the streets, or by the post-office clerks when he went to collect his pension. They chided him in the post office because the greater part of what he received there was given away to the tinker girls who held out to him their rag-wrapped infants, or was dropped into the palms of the tramps who now and again passed through the town, or slipped to shame-faced men who mumbled tales of misfortune and bad luck.
    Greeted by none of these this morning, Orpen reached the Square, where cars were untidily parked and a woman in an overall was sweeping the pavement outside Bodell’s Bar. Windows bore the names of solicitors and accountants on pebbled glass or sunburnt mesh; more brashly, various other services were offered. The brass plates of doctors and the town’s dentist had for the most part lost their pristine shine; a fortnightly chiropodist relied for custom on a handwritten postcard beside his bell. Hall doors were green or red, black or

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