The Love Department

by William Trevor

  ‘Don’t be rude,’ said Lady Dolores, and turned her back on him.

  Edward left the love department and cycled straight to the Hand and Plough, thinking to himself that the woman was driving him to drink.

  ‘I’m like the hands on a clock,’ he said to Beach, who was already ensconced in a corner, and he sighed thickly, and talked to Beach about the playing of draughts. He drank beer for two hours and began to feel the effects of it.

  ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ said Mrs Hoop when she came. Edward looked at her morosely. Beach said:

  ‘What’s happened to you, Emily?’

  ‘ “Have three hundred quid,” she said. To a fellow in the knife business.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Beach.

  ‘The Bolsover woman,’ explained Mrs Hoop to Edward. ‘She’s buying the men of London.’ Mrs Hoop emitted a slow laugh. ‘Did you hear that, Harold?’ she called out to the barman. ‘About what I come across this afternoon?’

  ‘How’s Mrs Hoop?’ said Harold, wiping the counter with a damp cloth.

  ‘That tired,’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Septimus Tuam,’ said Edward, ‘is not in any knife business.’

  ‘I was up at five a.m.,’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘I was washing clothes.’

  ‘I’d like to have seen you, Mrs Hoop,’ Harold said, ‘up at five a.m.’

  ‘Get on with you,’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘How’s yourself? How’s tricks with the Irish?’

  ‘I have had a bad knee, Mrs Hoop. I’m after banging it on a barrel.’

  ‘Three hundred quid handed out on the telephone. Get in on the act, Harold. Bad knee and all.’ Mrs Hoop laughed loudly.

  ‘Funny,’ said Beach.

  ‘You’ve got a wire crossed,’ interrupted Edward. ‘It’s Septimus Tuam Mrs Bolsover was handing out money to. You can bet your boots.’

  ‘I’m that tired,’ repeated Mrs Hoop. ‘I’ve had a fine old day, I can tell you.’

  ‘You’re too tired to concentrate. You’ve got the whole thing wrong. You misheard the whole caboodle.’

  Mrs Hoop, suddenly aware that her report was being contradicted, repeated again what had taken place in the Bolsovers’ house that afternoon. ‘You’re boozed,’ she retorted, looked at Edward’s loosened collar and wild, unhappy eyes. Edward said:

  ‘I was telling Mr Beach about the game of draughts.’

  ‘We was drawing up the rules,’ said Beach, ‘before you looked in, Emily.’

  ‘It’s typical of Septimus Tuam to say he’s a man in a shop, you see. He’s an angel of the devil.’

  ‘What name is that, Edward? Tuam?’

  ‘Septimus Tuam,’ said Edward, forming a sentence that he would not have formed had he been sober, ‘has become a friend of your Mrs Bolsover. There’s no doubt about that at all.’

  ‘We seen Mrs Bolsover that night, lad,’ supplied Beach. ‘That was Mrs Bolsover in the house with the ape.’

  ‘I’ve seen her since, to tell the truth.’

  ‘I seen her stripped to the skin,’ said Beach. ‘I seen the woman in her birthday suit.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Mrs Hoop loudly. ‘By Jesus Christ!’

  ‘In my bed,’ said Beach in an attempt to make Mrs Hoop jealous, ‘dreaming. She and me was walking through a garden.’

  ‘Ha, ha. Did you hear that, Harold?’

  ‘Septimus Tuam is in mortal danger. Listen, Mrs Hoop, why don’t you pass that on to Mrs Bolsover?’

  ‘She’s a whore and a bitch,’ snapped Mrs Hoop. ‘Old Beach had a dirty dream. I’ll pass on that, by God.’

  ‘Tell her there’s a plot to kill Septimus Tuam. Say a youth is being impelled.’

  ‘Begin at the beginning, Edward,’ said Mrs Hoop, interested. ‘What’s all this you’re saying?’

  Edward was feeling sick. He took the wash-leather gloves from his pocket and put them on his hands. He thought the action might distract his stomach, but it seemed to make it worse.

  ‘I feel sick,’ he said.

  ‘Take a draught of beer, Edward. You’re boozed to the gills.’

  Edward took off his gloves, but didn’t follow Mrs Hoop’s advice. He said:

  ‘I’ve been indiscreet in my speech. I shouldn’t have mentioned Septimus Tuam.’

  ‘He’s mentioned now. Sexual, is it?’

  Edward shrugged, saying he didn’t know what to think. He said he imagined Mrs Bolsover was in love with Septimus Tuam. ‘There’s a lot of it about,’ he added.

  ‘We was made to be together,’ said Beach, opening his eyes. ‘We was made for a bit of love.’

  ‘Have you brought another will-form, Edward? Old Beach is to sign on the dot tonight. He’s promised on his honour.’

  ‘Tell Mrs Bolsover. Tell her you heard it in a pub: death is after Septimus Tuam.’

  Mrs Hoop, intrigued and joyful, was puzzled by Edward’s repeated references to the death of the man to whom Mrs Bolsover had offered three hundred pounds. It was Edward who had got his wires crossed, she reckoned, confusing death with another story altogether.

  ‘How come you’re in on the act, Edward?’ asked Mrs Hoop. ‘Knowing all the dirt?’

  Edward drew a deep breath and held it. He let it go gradually. He said:

  ‘I shouldn’t have spoken. It was a breach of confidential business.’

  ‘It’s safe with me,’ cried Mrs Hoop. ‘And old Beach doesn’t know the time of day it is. What’s the worry, Ed?’

  ‘It’s all a tragedy,’ said Edward. ‘It would make you cry.’

  Mrs Hoop nodded her head.

  ‘Pan-Am?’ said Mrs FitzArthur in New York. ‘Oh, this is Mrs FitzArthur here. Now can you book me a passage at once to London? I have made up my mind.’

  The girl in the Pan-American Airlines office said to hold the line, please, and spoke again almost as soon as she had said it. She said yes, it could be arranged, and offered Mrs FitzArthur a choice of several flights.

  ‘That early one,’ said Mrs FitzArthur, ‘sounds as good as any. And thank you most awfully.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Mrs FitzArthur,’ said the girl in Pan-Am.

  21

  On the evening of Thursday, October 14th, two days after Eve had written a cheque for three hundred pounds in favour of Septimus Tuam, Mrs Hoop, her day’s work done, waited for the return of James Bolsover at the corner of Crannoc Avenue. When his motor-car approached she hailed it with a peremptory gesture, holding up her open hand in the manner of a policeman at a crossroads.

  ‘Hullo, Mrs Hoop,’ said James, opening a window to talk to her. ‘How are you?’

  Mrs Hoop said that, considering everything, she was not too bad, adding that she could be worse. She was tired, she said, because once again she had risen early in order to do some washing. It was disgraceful, said Mrs Hoop, the amount of washing there was to do because of the fumes of London’s air. James remarked that she was working late in Crannoc Avenue too, and Mrs Hoop pursed her lips and said that she had stayed on specially in Crannoc Avenue in order to have a word with him.

  ‘With me?’ said James in some surprise.

  ‘I have to tell you a dirty thing, sir,’ whispered Mrs Hoop. ‘I’m that ashamed.’

  ‘Why me?’ enquired James.

  ‘I’m sick with embarrassment,’ confessed Mrs Hoop. ‘I’m sick to my stomach, sir.’

  ‘Are you in trouble, Mrs Hoop?’

  ‘Your wife is having sex with a man, sir.’

  ‘What did you say, Mrs Hoop?’

  ‘Septimus Tuam, sir. Famous for it.’

  James had never before heard of Septimus Tuam, and as Mrs Hoop spoke on about him he didn’t understand how it could possibly be that his wife had fallen in with so apparently profligate a character. He had often considered her days in their house, and had seen them as days that scarcely allowed for a liaison with a lover. He imagined quite clearly the organizing of the children and Mrs Hoop, and shopping and cooking, and lunches with Sybil Thornton, and te
as with the mothers of their children’s friends. He thanked Mrs Hoop in Crannoc Avenue, looking past her at his house. It occurred to him as he spoke that she had never cared for his wife. He said:

  ‘You’re not confusing the facts, Mrs Hoop, by any chance? You’re not thinking of another woman?’

  ‘As God is my witness,’ cried the charwoman, with bristling pride. ‘Come down to the Hand and Plough, sir, and hear the facts from others.’

  But James shook his head. He bade farewell to Mrs Hoop and drove on to his house, wondering if Mrs Hoop had invented the whole thing. It seemed most likely that she had.

  ‘Who’s Septimus Tuam?’ said James after the children had gone to bed. He said it idly, crossing the room to sit in another chair. ‘Who’s Septimus Tuam?’ he repeated.

  Eve, not knowing what her husband knew or what his source had been, said:

  ‘I’m having a love affair.’

  James sat down. He looked at Eve for a minute without speaking. He knew that she was speaking precisely the truth, because she was saying what Mrs Hoop had said, and because her mind appeared to be elsewhere. He heard her say:

  ‘Our marriage is without conversation. Our marriage has failed.’

  James said he was sorry, apologizing in a general way about many aspects of their marriage. He had intended to speak at length, but Eve interrupted him. She said:

  ‘I’m going to have to leave you.’

  James shook his head. He walked to where his wife was sitting and put his hands on her shoulders. He did not say anything at all. Then he lifted his hands and left the room. When he returned, he said he had been sick with a vengeance.

  ‘I am suggesting a divorce,’ said Eve.

  ‘We have two children.’ James gestured above his head towards the room where the children slept. ‘What of all that?’

  Eve said that in fairness to James the children should remain with him but that in fairness to the children they should go with her. It was a matter to arrange and discuss in a civilized way.

  A scene occurred between the Bolsovers then. Eve watched her husband storming about the room, walking from one wall to another, and throwing questions at her about the nature of her love affair and the nature of the man she loved.

  ‘You have deceived me in every way,’ said James in anger. ‘You have taken advantage of the money I make by the sweat of my brow. You have taken advantage of the trust I placed in you. I cannot believe that any of this is happening.’

  ‘It has happened already,’ said Eve. ‘It happened before either of us could lift a finger. I don’t understand it either.’

  ‘It’s all nonsense. It is rubbishy and silly.’

  ‘Maybe, James. But it remains a fact.’ She looked away from him, through the french window, into the twilight.

  James remembered incidents in the past. He remembered the house when they moved into it, before their furniture was there. He remembered Eve bathing from a beach somewhere before their children had been born. She had walked out of the sea towards him, and he had watched her coming closer. ‘It’s not at all cold,’ she had said.

  James looked at his wife now and could not see her as she was; he heard her voice talking about the sea, he saw her standing with a bathing cap in her hand, her hair dishevelled and seeming damp. ‘Your hair’s wet,’ he had said, looking up at her. ‘That bathing cap is leaky.’ There was a silence in his mind then: she stood before him, moving her lips and shaking out her hair. Her hair was long; the bathing cap had been white.

  James saw his wife buying food in a shop. He saw her moving across the floor of a large room in which there were people that both of them knew. She should have moved more casually, with a glass in her hand, a glass of Martini since it was a drink she enjoyed, or a glass of wine. But Eve came oddly over the floor of the room, carrying in a basket the goods she had bought in the shop. She smiled at him, and he saw in her basket a loaf of sliced bread. She smiled at him again, in a quiet sitting-room in which they were alone, a month or two before their marriage.

  ‘But I love you,’ said James, not drinking brandy as she had imagined he would. ‘I love you, and yet you do all this.’

  Eve did not defend herself. She could think of no real defence and she could find no words to excuse her actions or even to promote them in a more favourable light. ‘It is all too late,’ she cried, seeing her husband in a new fury and hearing him make promises for the future. ‘Oh, James my dear, it’s far too late: I’ve met Septimus Tuam.’

  But James said that the name was a ridiculous one, and reached now for the bottle of Hennessy brandy. She saw him note that it was three-quarters full and guessed his resolve to sit down in this room and finish it. He would remain there quietly in his chair, staring at the grey screen of the television set, drinking brandy until six o’clock in the morning; while she, above him, in their bed, would lie wakeful and watch the morning come, thinking of all the years she had been Mrs Bolsover, and murmuring to the image of Septimus Tuam.

  James remembered Captain Poache sitting silently in this room, perched comfortably on a sofa and drinking. He remembered the presence of Mr Clinger and Mr Linderfoot. He saw them in the room, standing about, talking about the Clingers’ pet; he heard Mrs Poache protesting that monkeys were notorious for carrying disease.

  ‘We must have a divorce,’ said Eve, but her husband made no reply. He opened the bottle of brandy and poured some into a glass. ‘I shall sit in this room all night,’ he said. ‘I feel like dying.’

  ‘A divorce,’ repeated Eve. And James said:

  ‘If I die, bury me in some graveyard. I will not be burnt, Eve: do you understand that? I am all against cremation.’

  ‘James, please.’

  ‘Sit with me here, if you care to. Look, have a drink.’ He rose and fetched another glass, but Eve shook her head. ‘Well, sit here anyhow, for by the look of things we’ll be sitting less together in the future. Or can’t you bear the sight of me?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly!’

  ‘Then let’s do other things. Let’s make the most of this great moment, as we did of the moment of marriage. Let’s go out laughing, Eve, why not? Let’s walk about the house and bang on doors and wake our children and be hilarious over a joke or two. Let’s burn things in the garden. Let’s burn your marriage lines, and books and letters, the things that I gave you and all that you gave me: clothes and jewellery, fountain pens, and slippers. Shall we make a bonfire, Eve? Shall we burn our children’s toys, the teddies and the gollies, Noah’s Ark, old bricks and wooden horses, and plastic things that may go flaming away in a second, ships and submarines, racing cars and dolls? Let’s smash that silly suit of armour into smithereens: I’ve often wanted to. Or shall we sit, Eve, more quietly here, and remember between us the day it happened, you and I in the Church of St Anselm, and afterwards on the lawns of that hotel, where Mrs Harrap hit a waiter? Did I propose this venture to you a month or so before? What did I say? I can’t remember. I said I loved you: I must have,’

  Eve murmured, but James didn’t listen much. He said:

  ‘I had thought, you know, that you and I would see old age together. I remember thinking that, seeing us on either side of a fire, talking of our children’s children and being of comfort one of us to the other. Well, there you are.’

  ‘I’m sorry, James.’

  James Bolsover looked at the woman he had married ten years ago, and saw great beauty in her. He saw two people walking about in love, she and a man, planning a future, hand in hand.

  ‘So you are having a love affair?’ said James. ‘So you are going round with some chap behind my back, making love and mocking me? You have broken our marriage.’

  ‘It was broken already. It was as empty as an eggshell.’

  ‘An eggshell? I didn’t see it like that. Still, I’ve become so dull a dog I probably wouldn’t.’

  ‘No, no. We’re both to blame for what has come about.’

  ‘Well, off you go then: go out now and tell this f
ellow that you’ve broken all your news. Tell him I’m sitting here with brandy. Why not go out, Eve? Bring the fellow back with you.’

  Eve said she didn’t wish to go out.

  ‘But isn’t your paramour hanging about somewhere? Isn’t he in a low-slung car, smoking feverishly and wondering how it’s going?’

  Eve said that Septimus Tuam was not like that. He did not smoke at all, she said, and did not own a low-slung car, or any kind of car.

  ‘He’s a lucky bird,’ said James, ‘to be cashing in on a girl like you. What shall I do when you go, Eve? What do you suggest?’

  ‘Let’s not talk of it now, James. Let’s wait until we’re used to this idea and have arranged for the children.’

  ‘I could have Mrs Hoop come here as housekeeper, I suppose. Come to that, I could marry Mrs Hoop.’

  He was smiling at her, Eve saw, but she saw his grief as well, and she knew in that moment what she had doubted: that this man who was still her husband loved her in his way, in a way that was inadequate.

  ‘It is too late,’ she cried out loudly, weeping herself. ‘It’s too late now, James.’

  His hands pressed the glass he held, and pressed it harder until it cracked and broke into splinters. His blood came fast, and brandy stung his open flesh.

  22

  For two days James remembered his life with Eve, and considered what had come to pass. He sat silent in his office, watched by Miss Brown and occasionally by Lake, not caring if they watched him or how they interpreted his grief. In the end he came to a decision.

  ‘He has seen the sign,’ said Lake to Miss Brown on the evening of the second day. ‘Straws are in the wind.’

  Lake was stretched in an arm-chair in Miss Brown’s bed-sitting-room, well pleased with himself. He had been summoned to appear before the board-men at a time when James Bolsover was otherwise engaged. ‘Tomorrow at ten,’ he informed Miss Brown. ‘It is the moment of my career. I feel well up to it: I am in tip-top trim.’

  Miss Brown returned his smile, pleased that he was going ahead so fast, and that his dreams were coming true.

  Lake thought that he had now better explain to the girl what he had been delicately hinting about for some time. He was about to begin when a picture flashed before him: he saw himself playing roulette with two members of the Italian aristocracy, a handsome middle-aged woman and her famously beautiful daughter. ‘She can’t sleep for thinking about you,’ said the middle-aged woman in an Italian accent. ‘And come to that, neither can I.’ Lake stretched out his hand and collected a bundle of his winnings, chips to the value of twelve thousand pounds.