The Love Department

by William Trevor

  ‘The dead have gripped me,’ cried Lady Dolores. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘I have left all that behind, Lady Dolores. I’m on my way to becoming Brother Edward.’

  ‘Septimus Tuam’s as dead as a door-nail,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘A taxi-cab took his life.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Edward, and Lady Dolores told him. She told him everything she knew, but she did not mention the wash-leather gloves.

  ‘That is not all,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘The dead –’

  ‘I cannot accept that stuff about the dead, Lady Dolores: I must tell you that. I am exchanging my innocence for wisdom and insight; I can’t agree that dead women impelled me to the love department and on to the tail of Septimus Tuam. In the calm air of St Gregory’s there’s not a chance at all for a theory like that. Strain and overwork fired my imagination; hadn’t I already seen Goths and Visigoths on the posters?’

  ‘The dead are as slippery as circus seals. Watch out for what you say about that crowd.’

  Edward laughed with suitable restraint. ‘Did the three dead women impel that old taxi-driver to knock off Septimus Tuam? Are you going to tell me that?’

  ‘Mr Blakeston-Smith?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I see no sign of wisdom and insight: you’re as innocent still as ever we knew you. What kind of a funeral d’you think our friend had?’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Edward.

  Two days before, the body had been burnt and the ash disposed of without much ceremony. A name, not the name by which the women had known him, had been found, written in his own hand, on a piece of card in a wallet. It was followed by the address of his room in Putney, in which a relevant document was discovered: a paper giving the simple instruction that when he died his body was to be reduced to ashes, which were in turn to be thrown away. On the back of this paper was the valid will of the man who had been killed in Putney High Street: it had been witnessed by two milkmen, and it left his money and his chattels to the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind.

  The title of the dead man was noted in bound ledgers and on numerous lists: all records were brought up to date. The Royal Commonwealth Society was grateful, and enquired if there happened to be a next of kin so that appreciation might be passed on, but there was no next of kin that anyone could discover.

  No woman who had known Septimus Tuam knew that it was he who had suffered in an accident in Putney, and no woman at all had looked upon the casket that contained his remains. At the hour of his death, Mrs FitzArthur spoke the words her husband had wished to hear. ‘He is a scoundrel and a ruffian,’ Mrs FitzArthur intoned. ‘If we saw him now, Harry, I would ask you to kick him in the pants.’ Mrs Poache read of the accidental death of a man with a name that was not Septimus Tuam, and remarked to the Captain that taxis were a scourge. For many years afterwards she noted the contents of obituaries, and perused with close attention items headed Man Found Dead or Foul Play not Ruled Out. A month or so before her own death she came to the conclusion that the young man who had called on her had been practising some form of esoteric humour, or else that she had completely misheard him.

  ‘Well,’ said Edward, ‘so that’s the end of that.’

  ‘End? Are you away in your head? I tell you, the dead –’

  ‘Lady Dolores, I must ask you not to utter any further insinuations about my sanity. I am in St Gregory’s now, in a quiet atmosphere. I have altogether finished with people who think I am a certified lunatic. As well as which, you may talk about the dead until the cows come home and I’ll not accept that the souls of three women from the Wimbledon area met up in their afterlife and did what you say they did. They’d never be allowed, Lady Dolores. You know that well.’

  ‘I know no such thing,’ shouted Lady Dolores. ‘Will you listen to me, pet?’

  Edward could smell the lunch cooking. Brother Edmund had said at breakfast that he intended composing a rich stew for lunch. ‘Would you mind going round to the butcher,’ he had said to Edward, ‘and asking for two pounds of succulent braising steak?’ Edward had done that and on his return had observed Brother Edmund carve the steak up in an expert way, and cut up as well a number of onions, carrots, parsnips, and a small green pepper. Beside him, in a bowl, were freshly made dumplings, Brother Edmund’s speciality.

  ‘I am listening,’ said Edward, ‘but I cannot help smelling the lunch cooking. We’re going to sit down to a stew.’

  ‘I will tell you a story,’ said Lady Dolores, ‘before you sit down to anything. I’ll tell you a story about the dead.’

  ‘Now, look here, Lady Dolores –’

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘I have great respect for you, Lady Dolores. You’ve taught me a considerable amount. But I’ll not be talked to about the dead. The dead have a province of their own. I’d be obliged if the dead could be left out of this.’

  Brother Edmund, passing by with a tin of condensed milk for a lemon pudding, inclined his head in an agreeing way. ‘A province of their own,’ he whispered, ‘is putting it aptly.’ He descended to the kitchen and said there that Edward was coming on.

  ‘You are talking to me brusquely,’ protested Lady Dolores, ‘when I’m only trying to tell you something. Why fear the dead, Mr Blakeston-Smith? We’re in this together.’ For a moment, Lady Dolores wondered if she should oblige Edward to listen to her by placing before him the facts about the wash-leather gloves in Putney High Street. She resisted the temptation, not wishing to ruin the youth’s life. ‘Well, then?’ she said.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Edward, deciding not to listen to a word. He had already resolved that every day of his life he would pray, not for the Bolsovers’ marriage alone, but for Mrs Hoop and the man called Lake who had ill-treated a woman. It had come to him firmly that the enemies of love needed what prayers they could get. He had resolved that until the day he died he would not forget the letters he had read in the love department and that he would never allow them to cease to shock him. He would recall with pain and concern the bewilderment of women, and Odette Sweeney, whose husband had brought home a doxy. And whenever he recognized in himself a single prick of conceit he would remember the accosting of Mr FitzArthur and the blow he had received from the butcher in Wapping. He had accused Mr FitzArthur of sins against women in cinemas; he had caused horror and confusion, and scenes on the streets of London. Edward guessed that he would remember for ever Mrs Poache asking him what message it was he had brought to her, and the weeping of Mrs Bolsover in the Bluebird Café, and old Beach murmuring after a woman on the make. He would not forget. He would pray for the preservation of love within marriage, and for married women everywhere. Already he had dreamed of being handed a thing like a halo and being given to understand that they had made him the patron saint of middle-aged wives.

  ‘Who are you?’ said the voice of Lady Dolores in Edward’s ear, and Edward said that he was Edward Blakeston-Smith.

  ‘No, no,’ came the shrill voice back. ‘I am telling you what I said to him. You cannot escape the dead, and there’s no use hiding your head and saying you can. Three dead women, and now this other. I’m surprised at your arguing, Mr Blakeston-Smith. What do they teach you in that place?’

  ‘I will pray for you, Lady Dolores. I will add you to my list.’

  ‘Be careful with that, pet: don’t go upsetting anything. Don’t tell any tales about what these dead are getting up to.’

  ‘I wish you’d consider getting that out of your system, you know. Love is a healthier subject to talk about. You had great wisdom there, Lady Dolores. “Love falls like snow-flakes” was one of the first things you said to me.’

  ‘I never said any such thing,’ snapped Lady Dolores.

  ‘Ah yes, now –’

  ‘I’ll sign off, Mr Blakeston-Smith. I have shown you my heart.’

  ‘We’ve been good friends,’ began Edward.

  ‘We’re the wanton prey of the dead, the two of us. You have your evidence in that they went into a de
cline and matched up their notes –’

  ‘Lady Dolores –’

  ‘They winkled you out of St Gregory’s and laid you before me, and, to tell you the truth, I nearly had a fit. Three dead women, average age fifty-one and a half.’

  ‘I cannot discuss the dead with you in this way. It’s far from proper for me in my present vocation. In any case, I find it upsetting.’

  ‘Are you there, Mr Blakeston-Smith?’

  ‘I am saying goodbye now.’

  ‘As for the other, you must take my word for that. I have given you the final scene: I have opened my innermost thoughts to you.’

  It occurred to Edward when he heard these words that, having closed his ears to her story about the dead, he had missed as well, apparently, something that was close to Lady Dolores’ heart. He had not meant to be as discourteous as that.

  ‘Look,’ said Edward.

  ‘Goodbye, pet. Take care what you say in those prayers.’

  ‘Wait, Lady Dolores –’

  ‘We’ll be dead when next we meet, Mr Blakeston-Smith.’

  ‘Lady Dolores –’

  ‘I’m signing off now.’

  ‘I’ll definitely be praying for you,’ said Edward quickly, ‘and for the soul of Septimus Tuam.’

  ‘I’ll tell him that,’ said Lady Dolores.

  Edward stood by the telephone in the hall of St Gregory’s. He replaced the receiver slowly, his eyes on the polished linoleum of the floor. The smell of the stew was greater now, for Brother Edmund had lifted the lid of the pot to inspect its contents. ‘I did not listen,’ said Edward. ‘I should have.’ He waited, and the voice of Lady Dolores echoed in his mind, and the story she had spoken disturbed his consciousness.

  Edward saw the love department again. He saw the typists rising from their seats and powdering their faces, about to leave for home. The clerks tidied away their jotters and the letters they had recently read; they said some final words and went their way. The silence in the hall of St Gregory’s became the silence of the love department, for only Lady Dolores was left there, in her grey sanctum, raising a glass of whisky to her lips, looking at a chocolate cake.

  Lady Dolores remained at her desk for many hours, reading the file on Septimus Tuam, unhappy because the man had been snatched from her. ‘It was a Tuesday night,’ said the voice of Lady Dolores. ‘It was ten minutes to midnight.’

  Edward saw Septimus Tuam enter the love department. He saw him walk through the typists’ room and then through the clerks’ room, beneath the frieze by Samuel Watson. ‘Who are you?’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Who are you and what do you want? It is ten to twelve.’ And the man advanced and said he was Septimus Tuam, come to enter her life. ‘I had planned,’ said the voice of Lady Dolores, ‘to seek him out on the pretext that he was in the dog business. But when he came to me dead there was no need for that. I’ll tell you now: I didn’t ever mention dogs to Septimus Tuam.’

  Edward moved softly across the linoleumed hall, thinking that Brother Toby would still be waiting for him, while the voice of Lady Dolores continued to speak in his mind. It was a low voice now, softer than he had ever heard it, and he knew by the sound that Lady Dolores was opening her innermost heart, and so he stood still. He was aware that the smell of the cooking had caused him to feel hungry; and he was aware of this dead man. Septimus Tuam stood before Lady Dolores’ desk and gazed at her without a smile. He projected a beautiful face, the still features of a saint, and the eyes of an animal with a soul. Returning that gaze, Lady Dolores swooned and shivered; she noted a trembling on the man’s lips; blood thickened in her veins. She realized then that he was about to say the words that she had never heard: he was about to address her as no living man had ever thought fit to address her. There was a haze around her, which touched her and warmed her, and her pulse was sluggish. There was an explosion that was soundless in the love department, and her ears were filled with the words she had read about. ‘I love you,’ said Septimus Tuam.

  Edward sat down. For a moment he thought of picking up the telephone and talking again to Lady Dolores, confessing that he had not listened while she had been speaking, explaining that the story had caught on to something in his brain and had returned to him in full later. There were things he might say in a gentle way, but when he turned towards the telephone he sensed that he should not use it. ‘He is to rise from the dead repeatedly and often,’ said Lady Dolores in Edward’s mind. ‘He is a penitent, Mr Blakeston-Smith: you can think of that.’

  Edward saw her waiting with bleary eyes, emptying her whisky bottle in the middle of the night. He saw her lonely in her love department, seeing what she wished to see. ‘Love will go on,’ she said, ‘a magic that is sometimes black.’ Edward knew that love would indeed do that: it would go on for other people, drawing them together for a reason of its own, now and again betraying them. And in a shoddy way it would go on for her: she would receive as her share the words of a dead pedlar, and she would be thankful for it.

  ‘A really beautiful stew,’ said Brother Edmund, passing through to the garden. ‘Brother Toby’s waiting for you.’

  Edward followed him slowly. He felt the love department invading St Gregory’s completely: the scented flesh of the typists, the murmuring clerks, the ferns and the palms and the rubber plants. ‘His dog prowls,’ said the murmuring clerks. ‘Now, red mechanic!’ they cried in unison. He looked on the face of Lady Dolores and she remarked that they’d meet when they were dead. ‘You have said to me things that women have written to you,’ exclaimed Edward in a whisper. ‘You have spoken the same kind of stuff.’ And she nodded her head and said she was a woman too.

  Edward closed his eyes and spoke to her. He agreed with her most vigorously that the dead were everywhere, coming to see people, talking and impelling, as slippery as circus seals. He should not have argued, he confessed that now: he had been wrong, and she had been wholly right. As he spoke, attempting to be kind, his whisper rose to a gabble and his words began to trip one another, tumbling without form from his mouth. He tried to say that he was sorry for failing in that world he had walked into, and for throwing away the gift she had given him, and for failing to see her as she was. In his distress, his voice had none of the gentleness he had intended it to have, and he felt himself defeated. He stood in silence, waiting for a change, seeing her hair like the mane of a horse, and her teeth smiling at him. When calmness came to him, he turned away. He left the grey sanctum and walked through the love department, and found himself in the garden of St Gregory’s.

  ‘We thought we’d lost you again,’ said Brother Toby, and laughed.

  ‘Lost?’ said Edward.

  ‘Well, you know. Gone for a walk.’

  Edward shook his head. He sat down and brought his eyes to bear on the draughts-board, and did not entirely understand the state of the game. ‘A farce in a vale of tears,’ he said.

  The sun shone on the garden of St Gregory’s, warming the backs of Edward’s hands. It shone on flower-beds that were empty of blooms and on the face of Brother Toby and on the printed page of Brother Edmund’s newspaper. It shone on the black and white squares of the draughts-board, causing them to glisten, bringing out the contrast. Edward sat still and made no move on the board before him. A cat, a long way off, walking carefully on the grass, crossed his line of vision but did not enter his thoughts. Nor did anything in the garden, not Brother Edmund, nor Brother Toby, nor even the garden itself. Edward saw himself dying, a man of eighty-seven whose hair had turned brittle, whose jaws had forgotten their function; and he felt himself remembering still, at that great age, how once he had ridden a bicycle through suburban roads, how he had read letters and listened to a woman in a place peculiarly titled. There would be no forgetting. He would remember for ever the facts of love as he had seen them played before him, and he would feel a sadness.

  Edward closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face, and opened them again and saw the cat still creeping on the grass and Brother Toby’s dark clot
hes and the figure of Brother Edmund moving away to attend again to his stew in the kitchen. He noticed the draughts-board and the black draughtsmen awaiting his attention, and the white kings of his opponent intent upon victory. He sat for a moment longer like a statue in the sunshine, and then he stretched out a hand and moved a black disc forward.

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published by The Bodley Head 1966

  Published in Penguin Books 1970

  Reissued in this edition 2014

  Copyright © William Trevor, 1966

  Cover © Charles Hewitt/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-241-96930-4