Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor Read Free Book Online Page B

going to church. Like Annie and like myself, she was tired of this house, of the two deaf old women who would not civilly address one another, of my father’s lugubrious conversation, and my brothers’ sniggering. I know that now, but at the time I had no pity for my mother’s tears, and no compassion for her trapped existence. I wanted to hurt her because a secret I valued had been dirtied by her probing.
    “You will give it back,” she commanded, her voice controlled, her tears wiped away with the tips of her fingers. “You will give it back to the woman.”
    “Why would I?”
    “Because I’m telling you to. Because I’m ashamed of you, Harry, as you should be yourself.”
    “I haven’t done anything.”
    “A woman that’s not related to a young boy doesn’t give him a present. I’m ashamed you would have taken it.”
    “There’s no harm in a tie-pin.”
    My mother hit me. She slapped me across the face, the way she used to when I was younger than my brothers. A sting of pain lingered on the side of my cheek; my whole face tingled hotly.
    “You’ll give that back to her.”
    I blinked, determined not to cry, looking away from her. The tie-pin was a present, I repeated. You couldn’t give back a present.
    “You’ll give it back and you’ll have done with going out to that house.” My mother went on talking, fast and angrily, calling Frau Messinger a wanton and a strumpet. “Oh, a great time she has for herself, with young boys coming out to visit her. Amn’t I the queer fool not to have known?”
    I remained silent. I had no intention of return-ing the tie-pin, nor did I intend to discontinue my visits to Cloverhill. If my father knew about this, my mother said, he’d go out there himself and abuse the pair of them.
    That wasn’t true. My father would never have gone out to Cloverhill House in such a frame of mind, any more than he would have thrashed me with his belt. All during our childhood there had been this threat of my father’s violence, but whenever some misdemeanour was reported to him he’d been bewildered and at a loss for words. He had taken no action whatsoever.
    “Get ready for church,” my mother said.
    Later, as we walked up through the town—my father and my brothers, Annie with my grandmothers—my mother said to me that none of them must know what had occurred, or hear anything whatsoever about the tie-pin. It would upset my brothers and sister, and worry my grandmothers; my father would be beside himself for a month. “You’ll be ashamed when you think about it in church,” she said.
    I stared stonily ahead, at my father’s back. On Sundays he wore a blue serge suit with a waistcoat, and a collar and tie, and an overcoat when it was cold. It was the only day of the week he looked like a Protestant, a respectable timberyard proprietor who had made his way up in the world, who carried coins in his pocket to distribute among us at the church gates. On other days he wore working clothes, since only they were suitable for the dust and grime of the yard. He still loaded timber himself, and worked the saws and planes. Occasionally he drove one of the lorries.
    On the way to church he greeted people he knew among the Catholics coming back from late Mass, the women grasping their prayerbooks, men with collars and ties. You could tell at a glance they were different from us: they didn’t often walk in a family as we did, but in ones and twos, with occasionally a huge bunch of children on their own, sprawled all over the street, chattering busily. The children eyed us, but because of my father and mother they didn’t shout “Proddy-woddy-green-guts” or “dolled-up-heathens.” Our pace was slow because of the two old women, and we always had to leave the house early in order to allow for this. In the church it took them ages to sit down, fumbling and making certain they were as far away from one another as possible. Neither of them stood up for the psalm or the hymns, only